Sanjaya narrates to Dhritarashtra the moment Arjuna, seeing the armies arrayed and battle about to begin, raises his bow and calls on Krishna. This is the last beat before the Gita's real teaching begins.
atha vyavasthitān dṛṣṭvā dhārtarāṣṭrān kapi-dhvajaḥ | pravṛtte śastra-sampāte dhanur udyamya pāṇḍavaḥ || hṛṣīkeśaṃ tadā vākyam idam āha mahī-pate ||
Then, seeing the sons of Dhritarashtra arrayed for battle, as weapons were about to clash, the Pandava (Arjuna), whose banner bears the monkey (Hanuman), raised his bow and spoke these words to Hrishikesha (Krishna), O lord of the earth (Dhritarashtra).
Verse 20 is a hinge. The armies are set, the weapons are ready, the outer scene is complete. What follows is not more battlefield description. It is the mind of one man beginning to crack open under the weight of what he is about to do. Sanjaya's narration is precise because this precision matters: everything about to unfold happens in the space between bow raised and arrow released.
Arjuna raises his bow automatically, from training. The body does the practiced thing. But then he speaks. That speaking is the tell. When someone in crisis reaches out mid-action, it is because something underneath the trained behavior has not been resolved. The outer competence and the inner fracture are running simultaneously.
Arjuna doesn't call out to anyone. He calls out to Hrishikesha specifically. In a moment when his senses are about to flood him with grief and confusion, he reaches for the part of himself (or the person near him) that he associates with sense mastery. This is not a conscious theological choice. It is what the moment pulls out of him.
Sanjaya is telling all of this to Dhritarashtra, a blind king who set this war in motion by refusing to govern his attachment to his son. He calls him 'lord of the earth.' The gap between that title and the reality is Vyasa pointing at something: power without inner governance is title without truth.
A founder walks into the board meeting where she is about to have to lay off thirty people. She has prepared the slides, rehearsed the words, dressed for it. From outside she looks composed and ready. Her hands do the practiced thing: she opens the laptop, pulls up the deck. But before she speaks to the room, she leans over to the one person she trusts and says something low. Not tactical. Something that comes from a place that has not settled yet. The outer form is complete. The inner question is still open.
Arjuna's senses are seconds away from overwhelming him. The eyes will show him relatives; the ears will fill with conch blasts and warcry; the skin will feel the heat of a hundred thousand soldiers. He calls on the sense-mastering quality before he knows he will need it. The name is the unconscious diagnosis: I am about to be flooded, and I am reaching for steadiness.
In verse 1.21, Arjuna makes his first direct request of Krishna: position the chariot between the two armies so he can see who has gathered to fight. The looking is about to begin, and what he sees will undo him. When ready, say: "1.21"