BHĀGAVADGĪTĀ. — The “Song of the Blessed One” is a didactic poem of 700 stanzas, inserted in Book VI of the Mahābhārata, chapters 23–40 according to the critical edition of Poona (1945). The decisive battle between the Kuruidi and the Panduidi for possession of the Madhyadēsa, which lasted 18 days, is about to begin. Standing on his war chariot, driven by his cousin Kṛṣṇa, who will later reveal himself as the god Viṣṇu made man, the Panduide hero Arjuna has raised his bow to shoot the first arrow, when he is suddenly overcome with dismay at seeing his relatives among the opposing forces. He begs the divine charioteer to halt the chariot between the two armies, and after observing that fathers and sons, grandfathers and grandsons, relatives and kinsmen by marriage, are arrayed against one another, he lets the bow fall and collapses onto the seat, renouncing combat. Kṛṣṇa consoles him and urges him to perform his duty as a soldier, because in battle bodies are killed, not souls, which are immortal.
Upon this episode is grafted the philosophical poem, which belongs to a period of transition: one in which Brahmanical institutions and rites had fallen into disrepute, and salvation was sought no longer in sacrifice and prayer, but in inactivity and renunciation of every human interest—family, possessions, heavenly joys—in order to attain identification with the Ātman (v.) through ecstatic contemplation. This antisocial conception of religious life, to which the (Bhagavad)-gītā is opposed, is already found in the most ancient Upaniṣads, and therefore the poem may also predate the Common Era by several centuries. To Arjuna, who had asked him for counsel (II, 7), the Blessed One, in the figure of Kṛṣṇa, prescribes a rule of life summarized in this triad: action (karman), knowledge (jñāna), and devotion (bhahti). Action must be disinterested and in accordance with one’s own duty (II, 47; XVIII, 43). The new ethic proclaimed by the Gītā is precisely that of dispassionate action (karmayoga), which does not bind one to rebirth and is acceptable to God, creator of the castes and of their respective duties. But activity must be regulated by knowledge, which culminates in recognition of the unity of all beings, thereby destroying egoism. This cannot be attained Yoga (v.), which is the best means of combating the natural inclination toward disbelief and ignorance. The practice of Yoga leads to love (bhahti) and to knowledge of God. Once the divine presence has been discovered and experienced, the action of one who practices “Yoga in action” becomes conformed to God’s will by virtue of the mystical experience attained (XVIII, 55–56). Divine grace is open to all; members of the lower and lowest castes, women, and even sinners attain the supreme goal if they seek refuge in the Blessed One. He is a helpful and merciful god; he becomes man and appears in the world in every cosmic age, when virtue declines and injustice triumphs, in order to save souls, which are a particle of him (XV, 7). Between one descent into the world and the next, the dharmaśāstra, the treatise on divine and human laws, serves as a guide for men, and Arjuna must conform his conduct to II. In any event, the Blessed One is always present in the world, penetrating and sustaining everything like the thread through the pearls of a necklace (VII, 7). “All this world,” he says (IX, 4), “is pervaded by me, who have assumed an imperceptible form; in me are all beings, but I am not in them.” “All beings, O son of Kundi (Arjuna), return to my nature at the end of a cosmic age, and at the beginning of an age I recreate them (IX, 7).” The god of the Gītā is therefore immanent and transcendent; pantheism and theism are found associated in a cosmic conception, absurd to us, but not to the Indian mind. The Taittirīya-upaniṣad, II, 6, says: “He (Brahman), having performed penance, created all this (the universe), whatever it may be. Having created it, he entered into it.” With this premise, the assertions of Viṣṇu-Kṛṣṇa—that he is “uncreated and eternal, the Lord of all creatures,” “the great Ruler of the world,” “the origin of everything” (IV, 6; X, 3; 8)—should not surprise us. Before his manifestation, the Blessed One was the Absolute, the cosmic Principle, Brahman (v.).
The incompatibility, from the European point of view, of reconciling immanence with transcendence led Prof. Garbe to think that the poem, originally theistic, had been reworked in a pantheistic sense around the second century A.D. He therefore excised all the 170 stanzas that he judged incompatible with the worship of a personal god. H. Jacobi demonstrated the untenability of this hypothesis, and the foremost Indian authority on the Gītā, Prof. Belvalkar, showed in his learned and profound introduction to the English version of the poem how the apparent antinomies can be reconciled. Far from being the product of a reworking, the pantheism of the Gītā is original, and the rites prescribed by orthodox Brahmanism, although they do not constitute the summum bonum, are nevertheless regarded as means of attaining it (XVIII, 5). The character of the poem is conservative: sacrificial rite (yajña), duties of the social order (varṇāśrama), and obedience to the precepts of the dharmaśāstra constitute the practical element that it continues to recommend and defend. In its doctrinal and theoretical part, however, the poem adopts a conciliatory attitude, as when it recognizes that both Sāṃkhya and Yoga are equally valid means of salvation. Only atheists are irrevocably condemned to be reborn in demonic forms (XVI, 19–20). As for the parallels between the Gītā and the Gospels, which led Lorinser (1869) to argue that the author of the poem had known and plagiarized the New Testament, they must be regarded as purely accidental.
Ferdinando Belloni Filippi