In the supplied attestations (all from the Bhagavad Gītā mūla, chapter 2), yuddha denotes battle/war as the specific action to which Arjuna is enjoined. The term and its verbal cognates (yudhyasva, yuddhāya) consistently carry an imperatival force: Arjuna is exhorted to fight. The injunction is grounded variously in the metaphysics of the imperishable self versus perishable bodies (2.18), in the kṣatriya's good fortune at an unsought righteous battle that opens the gate of heaven (2.32), in the twofold gain of heaven-if-slain or earth-if-victorious (2.37), and in the prescription to engage with equanimity toward pleasure/pain, gain/loss, victory/defeat so as to incur no fault (2.38). Across these loci yuddha functions less as a neutral descriptive noun than as the object of a duty enjoined.
Senses
The reading surface. A later ingestion attaches a locus to a settled sense, or proposes a new one (dashed) for human triage — it never rewrites settled prose.
1 · Battle/fighting as the action enjoined upon Arjuna; the duty to fight, grounded in the ete…settledadded v1
Battle/fighting as the action enjoined upon Arjuna; the duty to fight, grounded in the eternity of the self and the perishability of bodies (imperatival cognate yudhyasva).
smṛti (epic-philosophical)
bhagavadgita:2.18
2 · Battle/war as a righteous, unsought opportunity that, falling of its own accord, opens the…settledadded v1
Battle/war as a righteous, unsought opportunity that, falling of its own accord, opens the gate of heaven and is the good fortune of warriors (yuddham īdṛśam).
smṛti (epic-philosophical)
bhagavadgita:2.32
3 · Battle/war as the end for which one is to rise resolved (yuddhāya kṛta-niścayaḥ), with ass…settledadded v1
Battle/war as the end for which one is to rise resolved (yuddhāya kṛta-niścayaḥ), with assured outcome of heaven if slain or the earth if victorious.
smṛti (epic-philosophical)
bhagavadgita:2.37
4 · Fighting/engagement as the action to which one is to be yoked with equanimity toward duali…settledadded v1
Fighting/engagement as the action to which one is to be yoked with equanimity toward dualities, so as to incur no fault (yuddhāya yujyasva).
smṛti (epic-philosophical)
bhagavadgita:2.38
Attestation concordance — tier 2, every locus
Append-only. Grows by locus as texts arrive; stays one collapsed table so the senses remain the reading surface.
sukha-duḥkhe same kṛtvā lābhālābhau jayājayau | tato yuddhāya yujyasva naivaṃ pāpam avāpsyasi ||38||
Editions & provenance
v1Bhagavad Gītā mūla (ch. 1) — +4 loci 4 sense(s) drafted from 4 Gītā locus/loci.
Caveats
The corpus supplied is a single tradition and single textual layer: all four attestations are Bhagavad Gītā mūla (Gītā chapter 2). No commentary loci (Gauḍapāda or Śaṅkara) were supplied, so no commentary positions are attributed.
The headword yuddha is attested as a noun only at 2.32 (yuddham) and 2.37/2.38 (yuddhāya); at 2.18 the relevant form is the verbal imperative yudhyasva, included here as a cognate grounding the injunctive sense.
The 'normative-rule' archetype reflects the imperatival framing of the attestations (yudhyasva, uttiṣṭha ... yuddhāya kṛta-niścayaḥ, yuddhāya yujyasva); yuddha itself is lexically a noun (battle/war) and the normative force attaches to the enjoinment to engage in it.
The different rationales given across 2.18, 2.32, 2.37 and 2.38 are distinct argumentative grounds within a single continuous passage, not an interpretive split over the meaning of the term; hence not marked contested.