Bhagavad-Gita

Bhagavad-Gita (Sanskrit, “Song of the Lord”), 2,000-year-old, 700-verse Sanskrit poem regarded by many believers in Hinduism as their most important religious text.

Technically, the poem, which takes the form of a dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna, belongs not to the revealed category of Vedic literature (shruti), but to smriti, the tradition which derives its authority from the Veda. Nevertheless, for Vaishnavas in particular (who identified Krishna with Vishnu), and increasingly for most Hindus, the Gita came to be imbued with the authority of a revealed text, worthy of independent commentarial exegesis. Indeed, before the modern period, systematic study of the text would always have taken place from within a particular commentarial tradition. With the exception of these scholarly exegetes, however, most Indians, while they might have known and been able to recite certain verses from the Gita, would have had no theological overview of the text. This situation began to change in India in the 19th century with the introduction of printing presses and increasing literacy; the subsequent demand for complete versions of the Gita in modern languages widened even further the range of its influence. In a simultaneous development, the Gita became the subject of increasing numbers of Western translations and commentaries. So popular has it now become that, by many people both in India and beyond, it is regarded as encapsulating Hindu (even Indian) spiritual values in general.

The Bhagavad-Gita is embedded in book six of the great epic of Sanskrit literature, the Mahabharata, which tells of the struggle between two contending sets of cousins for the kingdom of Bharata (northern India). The Gita opens at the moment when total war is about to begin. And in the context of that wider narrative it resolves a dilemma faced by the great hero, Arjuna: should he conform to his inherent duty as a warrior and fight, yet by doing so kill his enemies, who are also his own kinsmen and teachers; or should he refuse to join battle, and disrupt the natural order? To take either path—one aligned to the socio-religious status quo, the other to the religious institution of renunciation, with its emphasis on non-violence—would seem to bring bad results both for Arjuna himself and for society in general. In response to this quandary, Krishna, the Lord of the title and, until this point in the epic, Arjuna's ally and peer, teaches him the real nature of action (karma) and its effects. Action performed disinterestedly, without attachment to the results ( karma-yoga), has no bad effects for the actor. According to this compromise, one should perform one's inherent duty—that is, conform to one's social role—but renounce internally. In fact, Krishna, who reveals himself to be God omnipotent, maintainer and destroyer of the universe, acts at the universal level in precisely this way himself. By activating his lower or material nature, he has brought the universe into being, but he observes his creation dispassionately. Moreover, drawing on the Sankhya distinction between spirit and matter, Krishna reveals to Arjuna that the individual soul (atman) is eternal and indestructible: it neither kills nor is killed, and is identical with the absolute power (brahman) underlying all phenomena, seen here as God's higher nature. Knowledge of this correspondence, realized through meditation, is in itself liberating.

In a further modification of this teaching, Krishna instructs Arjuna that human agency is simply an illusion: God is in fact the only real actor, something dramatically illustrated in a terrifying theophany in which Krishna reveals his supreme, universal form. Any action whatsoever, including its results, should therefore be “sacrificed” or made over to God, for they are his anyway. Furthermore, one should make such offerings with devotion to God (bhakti). In this way the devotees share in God, and He is in them. Those who earn God's grace in this fashion, regardless of their social status or gender, will attain supreme peace. At the very end of the Gita a new and more personal note is added in which Krishna promises that the single-minded devotee will come to him, precisely because such a person is dear to him. This kind of relationship between God and human beings provides a starting point for the fully-fledged emotional bhakti of medieval Hinduism.

The Gita's diverse contents have encouraged equally diverse, not to say conflicting interpretations. Indeed, since it presents itself as the word of God, many of its readers have regarded it as a universally valid charter for various kinds of social and political action. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the enthusiasm of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, who first discovered it in an English translation, and then read it as an allegory of the human condition, teaching non-violence as the highest truth.