Appendix: An external examination of the Bhagavad-Gītā

aviditvā ṛṣiṃ chando daivataṃ yogam eva ca |
yo 'dhyāpayej japed vāpi pāpīyañ jāyate tu saḥ ||
  —(SMṚTI).

"That man who teaches or recites any incantation (mantra) without knowing the Ṛṣi, metre, (chanda), deity (devata), and purpose (viniyoga) of it, commits a sin".^[1]

I have in the previous chapters shown how Śrī Kṛṣṇa induced Arjuna to fight, after having proved to him with the help of the Vedānta-Śāstra that:

(i) the Karma-Yoga was more meritorious; that

(ii) in the Karma-Yoga, Reason was the important factor; that

(iii) Release was obtained by performing Actions according to one's own status in life with a Reason which had become Equable as a result of the Realisation of the Identity of the Brahman and the Ātman or by the worship of the Parameśvara; and that

(iv) nothing else is necessary for obtaining Release, and that He did this in order to correct Arjuna, who, after having first visualised the actual form of the terrible destruction of the clan and of the community which was sure to arise on account of the Bhāratī war, was on the point of renouncing his duties as a soldier, and taking up the life of an ascetic.

When I have in this way defined the true import of the Gītā, it is easy to meet the objections, which have been raised, to the effect that 'there is no reason to include the Gītā in the Mahābhārata', etc., as a result of the misunderstanding that the Gītā is a book which deals purely with. Vedānta and supports Inaction. Because, just as Śrī-Kṛṣṇa had compelled Arjuna to abstain from murdering Yudhiṣṭhira, by explaining to him the difference between Truth (satya) and Falsehood (anṛta) in the Karṇaparva, so also was the advice given in the Gītā necessary to induce Arjuna to fight; and considering the matter even from the literary point of view, it is clear that the exposition of the principles of Morality and Immorality in worldly life, or of the Doable and the Not-Doable, have been ultimately mentioned in the Gītā, as- it was necessary to mention in some place or other the fundamental principles underlying many similar incidents in various places in the Mahābhārata.

In the Vanaparva, in the conversation between the Hunter (vyādha) and the Brahmin, the Hunter has justified why he carries on the trade of selling: flesh on the authority of Vedānta; and in the conversation between Tulādhāra and Jājali in the Śāntiparva, Tulādhāra has justified his profession of a merchant in a similar way (Vana. 206–215; and Śān. 260–263). But this justification refers only to those respective professions. In the same way, though there are dissertations in several places in the Mahābhārata on the questions of Non-Violence, Truth, etc., yet, as they also are one-sided, that is to say, are made only with reference to the subject-matter in question, these dissertations cannot be said to be the principal part of the Mahābhārata; nor do these one-sided dissertations explain whether or not people should take as illustrations the lives of those great persons like Śrī Kṛṣṇa and the Pāṇḍavas, for describing whose magnificent deeds, the Mahābhārata was written by Vyāsa,. and should act accordingly. If worldly life is fruitless, and if it is the better course to take up the life of an ascetic sometime or other, one is faced with the questions why Śrī Kṛṣṇa or the Pāṇḍavas should have taken part in these useless activities. as also why Vyāsa should have laboured for three years (Ma, Bhā. Ā. 62.52), and written a book of nearly a hundred thousand verses for glorifying those activities for the general good, with whatever motive they might have taken part in those activities.

These questions are not satisfactorily solved by saying that the duties prescribed for the various castes and the different stages of life are for the purification of the Mind; because, acting according to one's duties, or the other activities of the world, occupy in any case only an inferior place from the point of view of the School of Renunciation. Therefore, it was necessary to answer the above-mentioned objections, which cut like an axe at the roots (mūle kuṭhāraḥ) of the conduct of those noble souls, whose lives had been described in the Mahābhārata, and to explain in detail in some place or other in the Mahābhārata whether or not a man should take part in worldly affairs, and if so, how a man should perform his various duties in worldly life without obstructing his own Release by such Action. But it would not have been proper to deal with this subject-matter in the Nalopākhyāna, Rāmopākhyāna, and other subsidiary chapters in the Mahābhārata; because, in that case, such an exposition would have been considered subsidiary like those subsidiary chapters. Also, if the Gītā had been crammed into the exposition of the various subjects which had been dealt with in the Vanaparva and the Śāntiparva, it would certainly have lost its importance; and that is why this independent philosophy of the Doable and the Not-Doable has been dealt with, with all the arguments in support of it, at the psychological moment when the Udyogaparva was over, and the Bhāratī war, the most important part of the Mahābhārata, was about to start, by raising to that war an objection, which was seemingly unconquerable from the point of view of Morality.

In short, even if we keep aside for the time being the traditional story that Śrī Kṛṣṇa preached the Gītā to Arjuna at the commencement of the war, and consider the matter from the point of view that the Gītā is a Vedic epic included in the Mahābhārata for explaining Morality and Immorality, we will see that the place which has been chosen in the Bhārata for the preaching of the Gītā is such as is even poetically a most proper one for impressing the importance of the Gītā on the minds of people.

When the propriety of the subject-matter of the Gītā, as also of the place where it has been put in the Mahābhārata has been explained in this way, the objection that there was no necessity to preach this Spiritual Knowledge on the battle-field, and that the text must have been interpolated into the Mahābhārata at a later date, or the question whether ten stanzas or one hundred stanzas are the important stanzas in the Bhagavadgītā, no longer remain; because, when it was once decided that certain subjects must for certain reasons be included in certain places in the Mahābhārata, in order to explain Morality, and to justify the Bhārata being expanded into the Mahābhārata, the writer of the Mahābhārata did not care how much space was taken up in fully expounding those subject-matters, as will be seen from the other chapters of the Mahābhārata.

Yet, as it is necessary to consider what amount of substance there is in the various other theories which have been advanced as regards the external examination of the Gītā, and as I have now occasion to do, so, I have in the following seven parts of this chapter, dealt seriatim with seven of these subjects, namely,

1. the Gītā and the Mahābhārata,
2. the Gītā and the Upaniṣads,
3. the Gītā and the Brahma-Sūtras,
4. the rise of the Bhāgavata religion and the Gītā,
5. the time or date of the Gītā as it now exists,
6. the Gītā and the Buddhistic literature, and
7. the Gītā and the Christian Bible.

I must, however, make it clear to start with, that, as external critics examine the Mahābhārata, the Gītā, the Brahma-Sūtras, the Upaniṣads etc., merely as literature, that is, from the worldly and historical point of view, I also propose to deal with the above-mentioned subjects from the same points of view.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

This is a statement from some Smṛti text, bat I cannot find out from which text. But the root of it is in the Ārṣeya Brāhmaṇa Śruti text (Ārṣeya. 1).

That is, as follows:–

yo ha vā aviditārṣeyacchandodaivatabrāhmaṇena mantreṇa yājayati vā 'dhyāpayati vā sthāṇuṃ varcchati gartaṃ vā pratipadyate.

The Ṛṣi, metre, etc., of any incantation are its external aspects; and one should not recite the incantation unless one knows these aspects. The same rule mast be applied to a book like the Gītā.