Srimat Bhagavadgita: A Study

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Early reading of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata in abridgement and in full translation in Kannada made me when still young an ardent admirer of those narratives. Unfriendly criticism by Christian Missionaries of this and that aspect of Hinduism led me in youth to assume a posture of defence. Later criticism in much the same vein by our own people trained to agree with the West forced me to examine matters with a view to understand them. Further reading led me to the realisation that our religious literature is too vast for any one to really know in full, that it was the work of thousands of men, that these men had used the freedom that our religion gives its votaries to expound views looking in many directions and to produce fiction that supported these views. This free exercise of freedom by thousands of writers of varying capacity in thought, feeling, belief, and expression over the centuries had made our religious literature a wilderness in which the good sense of earlier writing was over-shadowed by inferior work of later time. When the process was over, Sanatana Dharma had become Hinduism, differing from its former content as the Ganga that enters the sea differs from the Ganga that starts from the hills. Safety for our religion, it seemed to me, lies now in getting free of this inferior accretion; and this we should do by processes which may be put under three heads restoration, re-interpretation, and reconstruction. Restoration would lie in the direction of bringing the best part of our inheritance into the process of the education of our young people. Re-interpretation would lie in the explanation of ideas like those of Saraswati, Kali and of stories like those of Vamana, Narasimha, Gajendra Moksha. Reconstructions would lie in removing from our great literature the accretions of later times which had spoilt its beauty, and prevented it from shaping our lives as it should have done. This would be work like what Maharaja Krishnaraja Wodeyar the Fourth had done in the temple of Chenna Kesava in Belur by getting removed the mantaps which had been constructed in the enclosure of the temple by officious devotees who did not realise the harm they were doing to the symmetry of the structure by the structures they were adding. All this, I submitted some years ago, was work which should be undertaken in later life by students in our Universities, whose minds had been trained to think correctly, honestly, and courageously. Only so would we get in national life the full benefit of our large cultural inheritance.

As my own contribution to the work thus prescribed, I published studies of the Ramayana, and the Mahabharata, and am now publishing this study of the Bhagavadgita.

The course taken in the study is new. I have stated in the body of the work why I have adopted the course and I beg readers who may not be inclined to agree, to examine the thesis in detail with patience before rejecting it. Study with patience is required even from those who are inclined to agree. They will find the examination an enjoyable exercise, and the meaning of the Gita will stand before them in clear and beautiful symmetry like the Chenna Kesava temple after the removal of the accretions.

'Srotavyam anasuyaya' said Valmiki starting on his work. 'Puranam ityeva na sadhu sarvam, na chaapi sarvam navamityavadyam' said Kalidasa starting on one of his plays. The Compiler of the Gita itself desired that his hearers should be 'shraddhavanta' and 'anasuyuh'. I do not ask for 'shraddha' on the part of my readers but I do beg them to bring to this study 'anasuya', a friendly mind and patience in relation to what may seem innovation.

In making my translation of the Gita I have had before me the two excellent translations of Swami Swarupananda of the Sri Ramakrishna Mission, and of Sri S. Radhakrishnan; for passages from the Mahabharata I have gone some times to the Srirangam edition of the two Acharyas, some times to the edition of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (BORI) and to the Kannada translation by Maharaja Krishnaraja Wodeyar III, based on a version which would appear to have belonged to the Saraswati Bhandara in the Mysore Palace.

The Gita makes no secret of its meaning and the earnest student does not have to search for it. Eloquent discourse and learned disqusition like those of Sri Aravinda Ghosh and Professor Rangacharya expanding the teaching of the Gita provide for those who can follow them delightful and instructive reading but are not really required for understanding the meaning of the text. The best commentary on the Gita is the Gita itself. Those whose knowledge of Sanskrit is not adequate should take the assistance of a good translation into the language they know well. The language of the Gita is crystal clear and the style what Sanskrit Rhetoric calls 'draksha paka, the style of the grape as distinguished from the banana and the coconut.

The subject of this study has been in my mind for nearly forty years, and I am happy that it has been granted to me to place this work before fellow-lovers of the Gita at least now. In doing it I say 'ma vidvishavahai'. You may not agree with me but do not dislike me on that account. I may be blundering but am nosing my way to the truth. That, at the best, is what any one else does in a difficult task like that undertaken in this study.

My eldest son-in-law Chiranjivi M.C. Seshadri lyengar has taken all the trouble of writing down dictation, preparing the manuscript for the press and looking through the printing. My younger daughter Soubhagyavati Aravindamma has helped by making fair copies of many pages in the press copy which had suffered much correction. Without this loving and willing help the work could not have been done.

Fifty years ago, I helped in putting through the press a translation of the Bhagavadgita into Kannada by the great scholar Brahmasree Seshacharya of Holavanahalli. Preparing the manuscript for the press and seeing to the printing, I came into intimate contact with its verses, one after another, and learnt to love and enjoy its teaching. Soon I saw that it was not one discourse spoken by Krishna to Arjuna on the battle-field. As a student of literature I had become familiar with the idea of interpolations in the texts of ancient works. Parts of the Gita seemed inconsistent with other parts and gave me the feeling that they were such interpolation. Careful examination of the text and deep and careful thought led me to the conclusion that the teaching of the book fell into three distinct parts. The first part was what Krishna said to Arjuna as a great and noble elder. The second was what he was made to say as incarnation of Vishnu, in support of the teaching in the first part. The third part was a miscellaneous collection of ideas on a number of important topics slightly connected with the main teaching and having some collateral value.

By this time, I had made a study of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata and found that both these great works as they have come down to us were full of matter which could only be interpolation. In particular, large portions of the interpolation in the Mahabharata related to the idea of Sri Krishna as an incarnation. The part of the teaching in the Bhagavadgita which referred to Krishna in this sense seemed to be clearly part of the addition made to the Bharata.

The part of the teaching by Krishna as a noble elder could, I saw, be separated from the other two parts. This part, I felt, could be called Krishna-Gita as the whole containing the idea of Krishna as incarnation was called Bhagavadgita. I published in a Kannada magazine in 1939, an essay on this theme; and brought together at the end the verses that could be called Krishna-Gita. I spoke in these years on this subject to a number of audiences. Orthodox people could not agree to what I was saying but while not agreeing, some of them said that, tradition treated a selection of some hundred and twenty verses out of the whole text as the kernel of the Gita and that many orthodox persons repeated these verses daily as equivalent to repeating the complete text. I tried to know which these hundred-and-twenty verses were; but could not. It looked as if the orthodox knew that there was such a tradition, but did not keep up the practice of the daily repetition of the selected verses.

I learnt in these years that a shorter form of the Bhagavadgita of the length of about a hundred and twenty verses was current in Java. I had then no way of getting at it. Some time later, I found an article in an issue of the Viswabharati Quarterly on this Java version. The version was not a complete collection, and I could not get much guidance from it.

Still later I learnt that a German scholar Otto had published a thesis indicating that portions of the Gita were additions. Some-time later I learnt that the thesis had been translated into English. I got it and found that in separating the original text and the additions, the writer treated the Viswarupadarshna as part of the original. I could not accept this view.

My approach to the Gita is that of a student of literature. I have mentioned my studies of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata and the conclusion that parts of both the great books should be considered as additions to the original compositions. Scholarly editions of these works by the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute and the Oriental Institute of Baroda since published, show that this is the case. There are students of these books who think of them as sacred books which should not be examined in this way. Some persons do not agree with this view. I belong to this class. Foreign scholars have spoken of these books and also of the Gita in this sense. I have not read all that they have written; but so far as the Gita is concerned, I believe that, examining the text carefully in detail, we in India can come to conclusions similar to those they have expounded. If there is a difference it must be in the fact that to the foreign scholars, the Gita is probably not sacred work. To most persons in India, it is definitely sacred, though to some persons not above question.

Tradition, of course, deprecates such question. The text has come down through century after century as one body of composition. It is about God and his doings. It is sacred. It is not right to examine it and find defects in it. That is the attitude of tradition. It is quite understandable on the basis that all of the composition is one single production. But if while reading a work we feel that it cannot all be one composition, why should we not admit that it is probably the work of more than one person or a collection of pieces composed at different times and put together?

To make my meaning clear, I may give examples from three different texts as they have come down to us as sacred and other literature.

I read the Bible as I read any other work of literature and find in the early chapters of the First Book, the book of Genesis, a description of creation. God, the text says, created all living things. 'Male and female, created He them. Further on, the text says that God put the first man to sleep and took out a rib from his body and made woman out of it. There is no mention of his having done this to the male of any other living creature. How did the female of these come into existence? Obviously the first statement is complete. Male and female were created of every species. The story of man being put to sleep and a rib being taken out and a woman being formed out of it, is addition made later. The second statement would have been consistent with the first, and merely an expansion by the same author, if it had said that the female of all the species were created the same way. This has not been said. So it becomes another statement by another author.