BHAGAVAD G?T?

BHAGAVAD G?T? The title of the Bhagavad G?t? is now generally rendered as the "Song of the Blessed One," but it originally meant the "Upanishads sung by the Blessed One"—a philosophical, rather than a lyrical poem. Together with the old Upanishads and the philosophical "aphorisms of Ved?nta," it forms the "triple canon" (prasth?na-traya) of Ved?nta (End of the Vedas) philosophy and has thus been a mainstay not only of Ved?nta, but of Hinduism in general for more than two millennia. Part of the gigantic epic Mah?bh?rata, the G?t? was composed sometime around the third or second century b.c. Whether it was an early or later episode in that epic as it evolved in the oral tradition, it is now a central element of that entire work. Attempts by some scholars to show it as an interpolation are now generally regarded as oversimplifications, attributed to a lack of appreciation for the character of oral literature.

The Bhagavad G?t? comprises eighteen chapters in the sixth book of the Mah?bh?rata, which described the beginning of the great battle between the armies of the rival cousins: the five P?ndava brothers against the one hundred Kauravas. Krishna, a prince of a local tribe—known only to a few insiders as the god Vishnu descended in a human form—had taken the side of the P?ndavas, but only as an adviser, not as a combatant. In this battle of the righteous P?ndavas against the devious Kauravas, a struggle of good against evil that was really part of a larger divine scheme in which all men played their assigned roles, Krishna assumed the role of the trusted charioteer to his friend Arjuna, one of the five P?ndavas and the commander of their army. As the battle was about to commence, Arjuna realized that he would fight and kill his relatives and his former teachers for the sake of the kingdom. He sat down in his chariot and refused to start the battle. After first appealing without success to Arjuna's pride and sense of honor as a soldier, Krishna turned to philosophy, the vanity of bodily existence, and finally to the ethics of action and the love of God. As Arjuna still hesitated, Krishna overwhelmed him with a display of his divine glory and authority. It is this code of ethics that gave the G?t?, as the text is commonly known, its prominent role, spawning innumerable commentaries and becoming the guiding light for many prominent people, among them Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Mahatma M. K. Gandhi, Henry David Thoreau, and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

In the G?t?, Krishna went beyond earlier philosophic concepts that sought bliss and liberation though ritual acts, metaphysical insight, or total renunciation and inactivity, proposing the new paths of "disinterested selfless action" (karma yoga) and fervent "devotion" (bhakti). Activity out of a sense of duty (dharma, which includes the notions of law, righteousness, and functional identity) leaves no residue of karma to create painful rebirths, since it is not the act itself, but the emotions and thoughts behind it that create karma. Arjuna must fight because it is his princely duty, not for the sake of the prize of victory. Better still is the path of total devotion (bhakti, "sharing, taking part") to God. There are few antecedents to this new theism before the G?t?, but it flourished later, especially among the millions of devotees of Krishna/Vishnu.

Hartmut E. Scharfe

See alsoHinduism (Dharma) ; Mah?bh?rata ; Vishnu and Avat?ras

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Brockington, John. The Sanskrit Epics. Leiden: Brill, 1998. van Buitenen, J. A. B. The Bhagavadg?t? in the Mah?bh?rata. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981.