A mudra is a physical symbol one forms, many times with the hands, in order to portray a meaning or idea. Krishna is also, ‘jnAna-mudrAya’, meaning he holds the JnAna mudra. These horses lead Arjuna, so he is therefore, guiding and protecting Arjuna, as we will see throughout Gita. The second is that Shri Krishna is actually Arjuna’s charioteer, in the war, when the Gita teaching is given again, he guides and protects the horses.
The first is that Krishna grew up on a ‘farm’ and herded cattle and protected them. This refers to two parts of Krishna’s life. The next adjective describing Shri Krishna, is ‘totra-vetraika-pANaye’, meaning- he has a stick and rope in one hand. In Vedanta, an ocean symbolizes the world around us, the metaphor is that we are stuck in the middle, half drowning, sometimes we are under water and sometimes we are above it (sorrow and happiness, respectively) and only one who knows this ocean well, and understands it, can get us across and out- to safety and to ultimate happiness, that is Krishna, that why he is ‘of the ocean’. The other meaning here is that Krishna is born of the ocean (again representing infinity) like the tree in the story. pAri is pAram asya asti, meaning that which has shores, so the ocean and ‘jAta’, means born of. Now, let’s analyze this for a second, why was the symbolism of this tree used here in this shloka? There are many examples of which fulfilling trees/animals/people/objects. In this story good and evil are symbolized and are releasing many objects from this ocean (representing infinity) and one of the objects to come out is this wish fulfilling ‘pArijAta tree’, so Shri Krishna is like that tree, in it’s wish fulfilling sense. So, ‘prapanna pArijAtAya’, prapanna means- for those who take refuge in him, he is a pArijAta- literally born of the oceans, referring to the story of the churning of the milky ocean. Salutations to Krishna: Who is a “tree of fulfillment”- the bestower of all desires to all those who totally surrender to Him, who has milked the Gita-nectar, the holder of Jnana-mudra, the wielder of the cane in one hand with which He drives home the herd of cattle under His protection. (Translation from Swami Chinmayananda’s commentary on Bhagavad Gita): JnAna-mudrAya k.rSnAya gItAm.rta duhe nama.h// Prapanna-pArijAtAya totra-vetraika-pANaye/ So, here are adjectives describing that Krishna While Shri Vyasa recorded this wonderful teaching, The Bhagavad Gita is a conversation between Lord Krishna, the teacher, and Arjuna, the student. This third dhyana shloka is a salute to Lord Krishna, without whom the Gita teaching would not exist.