Sanskrit
किरीटिनं गदिनं चक्रहस्तमिच्छामि त्वां द्रष्टुमहं तथैव । तेनैव रूपेण चतुर्भुजेन सहस्रबाहो भव विश्वमूर्ते ॥
kirīṭinaṃ gadinaṃ cakrahastam icchāmi tvāṃ draṣṭum ahaṃ tathaiva tenaiva rūpeṇa caturbhujena sahasrabāho bhava viśvamūrte
Translation
Diademed, mace and discus in Thy hand. Again I fain would see Thee as before; Put on again Thy four-armed shape, O Lord, O thousand-armed, of forms innumerate.
Annie Besant · The Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Annie Besant (4th ed., 1922) — Wikisource · Public Domain
Explanation
It’s worth noticing exactly what Arjuna asks for here — not yet the ordinary two-armed human charioteer, but the four-armed form with diadem, mace, and discus: recognizably divine, recognizably Vishnu’s iconography, but bounded and familiar rather than infinite. The full return to the human Krishna doesn’t happen until verses 50 and 51; this request marks a middle step in the descent, a form Arjuna can address as “deva” without it swallowing the horizon the way the cosmic vision has. Even the plea itself can’t quite let go of superlatives — “sahasrabāho,” thousand-armed — as if the vocabulary of awe hasn’t fully released him yet.