तस्य संजनयन्हर्षं कुरुवृद्धः पितामहः।सिंहनादं विनद्योच्चैः शङ्खं दध्मौ प्रतापवान्॥
tasya sañjanayan harṣaṃ kuru-vṛddhaḥ pitāmahaḥsiṃha-nādaṃ vinadyoccaiḥ śaṅkhaṃ dadhmau pratāpavān
Word by word
The verse says
Then the mighty elder of the Kurus, the grandfather Bhishma, roared like a lion and blew his conch, filling Duryodhana with joy.
In plain words
Bhishma answers without a word. He roars, and blows his conch.
The text says plainly why: to cheer Duryodhana up. The old man heard the speech. He heard what was underneath it. So he makes a great noise, the way you do for someone who needs it.
The word for him here is grandfather. On a battlefield, about to fight his own grandchildren.
Where you've felt this · in family life
An older relative says almost nothing all evening. Then he does one loud, cheerful thing — turns the music up, carves the meat with a flourish. It is not denial. It is the only comfort he has that does not make anyone talk.
Going deeper
Bhishma is one of the saddest figures in the whole epic, and this verse is the first glimpse of why.
He took a vow as a young man — never to rule, never to marry — for his father's happiness. That vow made him the still point the whole dynasty turned on, and it also made him the property of whoever held the throne. He raised both sets of cousins. He is about to fight for the side he believes is wrong, because a promise made generations ago has not released him.
So when he roars, it is not enthusiasm. It is an old man doing the one thing still left to him: making his grandson feel better for a moment.
Hold this beside 2.47, the verse at the centre of this whole book. Bhishma is the clearest case in the epic of a man bound by the fruit of an action — an outcome he wanted long ago, still holding him decades later. Krishna's teaching is aimed at exactly this kind of imprisonment.