The Bhagavad Gita

355 Pages·2005·5.09 MB·English

by  Bibek Debroy

TRANSLATED BY BIBEK DEBROY
The Bhagavad Gita
PENGUIN BOOKS
Contents
About the Author
Introduction
The Bhagavad Gita
Arjuna’s Dejection
The Knowledge of the Self
The Path of Action
The Path of Knowledge, Action and Renunciation
The Path of Renunciation
The Path of Meditation
The Path of Knowledge
The Path to the Supreme Spirit
The Path of Royalknowledge and Royal Secrets
The Divine Glory
Vision of The Universalform
The Path of Devotion
Discrimination Between Nature and The Self
Separation Between The Three Gunas
Union With The Supremebeing
Distinction Between The Divine and The Demonic
Distinction Between The Three Types of Faith
The Path of Liberation and Renunciation
Greatness of The Gita
Notes
Copyright
PENGUIN BOOKS
THE BHAGAVAD GITA
Bibek Debroy is a professional economist educated in Presidency College
(Kolkata), Delhi School of Economics and Trinity College (Cambridge). He has
taught in colleges and universities (Kolkata, Pune) and management institutes
(Indian Institute of Foreign Trade) and worked in research organizations
(National Council for Applied Economic Research, Rajiv Gandhi Institute for
Contemporary Studies) and for the government (Department of Economic
Affairs). He has published academic papers and books and also written popular
articles as a columnist (Business Today, Business Standard, Financial Express,
Indian Express, Telegraph). His special interests are trade, law and the political
economy of reforms. But beyond economics, Bibek Debroy has earlier (with his
wife) written a book on the Ramayana and the Mahabharata and published
abridged translations of the four Vedas, the eleven major Upanishads and the
nineteen major Puranas. His papers on Indology have been published in Annals
of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute.
Introduction
If there is one text that captures the essence of Hinduism, it is the Gita or, more
accurately, the Bhagavad Gita. As the word Gita suggests, the text was meant to
be sung and has therefore been translated into English as the Song Celestial.
However, the Bhagavad Gita is not the only Gita that is available, although it is
almost certainly the first. Following the Bhagavad Gita, clearly in imitation,
various other Gita texts surfaced. For instance, the Mahabharata itself has the
Kama Gita and the Anu Gita. The Bhagavad Gita is the most important of this
Gita literature and represents the teachings of Bhagavan/Lord Krishna to Arjuna
on the eve of the Kurukshetra war. However, the teachings do not actually start
until shloka (verse) 11 of Chapter 2. And one should not presume Krishna
speaks every shloka in the Gita. As will be seen, there are many shlokas spoken
by others. Indeed, there is also an impression that the Gita was told by Sanjaya
to Dhritarashtra. That impression is correct. But again, very few shlokas are
actually spoken by Sanjaya or even by Dhritarashtra. Actually, Dhritarashtra
speaks only one shloka, the first. The other shlokas are utterances by Sanjaya,
Krishna and Arjuna.
The Gita forms part of the Mahabharata—specifically of the Bhishma Parva
of the epic, that is, that period of the Kurukshetra war when Bhishma is the
Kaurava general. Chapters 14–40 of Bhishma Parva deal with the Bhagavad
Gita, although the Bhagavad Gita proper begins with Chapter 23 of Bhishma
Parva and ends with Chapter 40. The Bhagavad Gita proper has eighteen
chapters and 700 shlokas, as can be seen in the table below. Each chapter is
qualified with the word yoga, which means union or, even, path.

Probably everyone knows that there are three paths to liberation: jnana yoga,
karma yoga and bhakti yoga. Jnana yoga is the path of knowledge, karma yoga
is the path of action and bhakti yoga is the path of devotion. Yoga means union,
between the human and the divine. Broadly speaking, the first six chapters of the
Gita are primarily about karma yoga, the next six chapters about bhakti yoga and
the last six about jnana yoga. But this is a very rough division, because every
chapter has all three elements. However, one will notice the increasing
importance of bhakti yoga as one goes along. There are some shlokas that have
become so common that most people will recognize them. These usually occur
in the second, third and fourth chapters.
It is possible that the Bhagavad Gita originally had 750 shlokas. Some
regional variations still have this number. But after Shankaracharya’s (CE 788–
820) commentary on the Gita, versions with these extra shlokas disappeared.
And the Bhagavad Gita became more or less standardized with 699 or 700
shlokas. The difference occurs in the first chapter, which sometimes has forty-
six shlokas and sometimes forty-seven. But this difference is not in content: it is
only a variation in which shloka includes what part of the text. Shankaracharya
did not have a commentary on the first chapter and, because of this, the
numbering in the other chapters is now standardized. The Bhandarkar Oriental
Research Institute in Pune has a critical or authenticated edition of the
Mahabharata, and therefore a critical or authenticated edition of the Gita. That
is the version followed in this translation. Notwithstanding this, there are very
few variations across different versions of the Bhagavad Gita. Apart from
numbering, they are really minor and occur only in the first chapter and are
indicated in the text that follows. Some variations in numbering (that is, which
part of the text is included in which shloka) occur in the first and the fourth
chapters.
Shankaracharya’s commentary also seems to have made the Bhagavad Gita
much more popular. There is not much evidence of its popularity before that.
Indeed, the Bhagavad Gita is included in the smriti (memorized texts that come
down orally through the sages) rather than the shruti tradition of texts that have
been revealed. The Mahabharata was not composed at one point in time and
went through different versions. While some sections of the Mahabharata imply
knowledge of the teachings of the Gita, other sections display ignorance about
the Gita. Therefore, it is safe to assume that the Bhagavad Gita was interpolated
and added to earlier sections of the Mahabharata and was already in existence
when later parts of the Mahabharata were compiled. That suggests anything
between the fifth century BCE and the second century BCE for the first version of
the Gita and something like the second century CE for the final version.
There is no reason to presume that the Gita had a single author. The Gita is a
text that synthesizes and incorporates many teachings of the Upanishads. In fact,
many shlokas from the Upanishads are found in the Gita, with minor changes.
Attempts have been made to detect internal inconsistencies across parts that
represent bhakti or theism and parts that draw on Vedanta and are pantheistic. Or
between parts that draw on Vedanta and others that draw on sankhya philosophy.
However, these attempts are not terribly convincing. And there are also some
shlokas that are clearly old, because they follow grammatical norms that would
later have been regarded as not quite correct.
The reader may wonder why another translation of the Gita has been
attempted when so many exist. And one must remember that there are several
non-English translations as well, the Gita having been translated into almost fifty
languages. Well, the reason is not one. Because the more the Gita is read, the
better. Because each generation should have its own translation and because the
English in some of the earlier translations now seems archaic. And because there
is some reason for dissatisfaction with translations that are available. A
translator’s job is to translate, not to interpret. Especially when the sense of the
translation is not obvious, translators tend to interpret and superimpose their own
commentaries and this is particularly true of translations in English. That is
deliberately avoided in this translation.1 Interpretations are best left to those who
are learned. This text is therefore pure translation. To the extent interpretations
are needed, they are in the notes. But all said and done, there is no substitute to
reading the Sanskrit.
An international bibliography of the Gita2 (covering the period 1785 to 1979)
published in 1983 by Jagdish Chander Kapoor had 2795 entries in fifty
languages and 6000 citations. The year 1785 was chosen as that was when
Charles Wilkin’s first English translation of the Gita was published as
‘Dialogues of Kreeshna and Arjoon’ through the Asiatic Society of Bengal, with