The Bhagavad Gita For Millennials

by Bibek Debroy

A smriti text is something that is remembered, a reference to retention through memory, as knowledge was disseminated through oral transmission.

there are three texts (referred to as trayi or three) that capture the essence of Hinduism, or the Vedanta variety of Hinduism—the Upanishads, Brahmasutra (composed by Badarayana) and the Bhagavad Gita.

This means that we have been through twenty-seven dvapara yugas and there was a Vedavyasa in each dvapara yuga. To state it a bit more clearly, a mahayuga consists of satya or krita yuga, treta yuga, dvapara yuga and kali yuga. A cycle of creation is known as a manvantara, presided over by a Manu.

Krishna Dvaipayana Vedavyasa is from the current mahayuga and is therefore twenty-eighth in the line of Vedavyases.

If you check against BORI’s Critical Edition, Section 63 is about the Bhagavad Gita. It is named after the Bhagavad Gita and is a sub-parva of Bhishma Parva. It has 994 shlokas and twenty-seven chapters. Those who know a little bit about the Bhagavad Gita will be surprised.

If your edition of the Bhagavad Gita is an independent book and you are not reading it as part of the Mahabharata, the book may begin with something known as Gita dhyana (meditation on the Gita).

The book may also end with something known as Gita mahatmya (greatness of the Gita). This will say things like the following: ‘Those who wish to cross the ocean that is the world can happily use the boat that is the Gita.

The Gita dhyana and Gita mahatmya aren’t part of the original text of the Bhagavad Gita.

Adi Shankaracharya (788–820 CE) wrote a commentary on the Bhagavad Gita. The commentary started with 2.10. Whenever I use an expression like this, it will mean second chapter, tenth verse.

An even better idea is to read the paper M.R. Yardi published in 1977–78, which has more of the statistical detail than his book on the Bhagavad Gita.

there was a single author for the Bhagavad Gita and five different authors for the Mahabharata.

There are four people who speak in the Bhagavad Gita: Krishna, Arjuna, Sanjaya and Dhritarashtra. Of the 700 shlokas, 574 are spoken by Krishna, perfectly understandable; eighty-four shlokas are spoken by Arjuna and forty-one shlokas are spoken by Sanjaya. That is a total of 699. An often unnoticed, but obvious, fact is that Dhritarashtra speaks only one shloka in the entire Bhagavad Gita.

An akshauhini is a unit of the army, consisting of 21,870 chariots, 21,870 elephants, 65,610 horses and 1,09,350 foot-soldiers.

kshetra is a place of pilgrimage where there is no flowing water and tirtha is a place of pilgrimage where there is flowing water.

The Chedi kingdom was a powerful kingdom. When the Chedi king, Shishupala, was killed by Krishna, Shishupala’s son became the king. This son was Dhrishtaketu and he fought on the side of the Pandavas.

When Arjuna’s chariot advanced, Yudhamanyu protected it on the left and Uttamauja protected it on the right.

The Chandogya Upanishad is a major Upanishad and is dated to between eighth and sixth century BCE. First, in Part III, Chapter XVII and Verse 6 of Chandogya Upanishad, there is a reference to someone named Krishna, the son of Devaki, who studied under the sage Ghora Angirasa.

Though no one can produce a birth certificate for Krishna, any more than one can for Jesus Christ, the probability is pretty high that Krishna was a real person.

The Mahabharata tells us Krishna died thirty-six years after the Kurukshetra War. I should tell you that the Puranas (not the Mahabharata) tell us Krishna was eighty-nine years old when the Kurukshetra War was fought.

The original text of the Bhagavad Gita, or the Mahabharata for that matter, had no titles for the chapters.

There were six systems of darshana (loosely, philosophical schools of thought). These were Nyaya, Vaisheshika, Samkhya, Yoga, Mimamsa and Vedanta.

We may even know that Patanjali spoke of ashtanga (eight-limbed) yoga. These eight limbs of yoga are yama, niyama, asana, pranayama, pratyahara, dharana, dhyana and samadhi.

The longest of these is known as Shanti Parva and talks about what happens once the Kurukshetra War is over. As a subsection of Shanti Parva, there is a section known as Moksha Dharma Parva. I think one will form a better appreciation of the Bhagavad Gita if one reads the Moksha Dharma Parva as a companion text. One will have a better understanding of what the Bhagavad Gita means by yoga.

In its core, Vedanta believes the following: (1) Every living being has a soul, known as jivatman The word ‘soul’ is an imperfect translation of atman, but there is nothing better. (2) There is the universal soul, brahman or paramatman (3) Vedanta is knowledge or awareness (jnana, about the relationship between the jivatman and the paramatman. (4) There is the cycle of worldly existence, samsara and the goal is to become free of this cycle, attaining emancipation (moksha, (5) But until one has attained emancipation, one is bound by karman (Karman is what we normally refer to as karma. Because the word has a neuter gender in Sanskrit, it is written as karman.)

The first brahmana avatara will be Kalki. We live in a very homocentric world.

Shankaracharya stated it very strongly: ‘As long as man is capable of earning wealth, his family members are attached to him. But later, when his body has aged, even if he remains alive, no one at home asks about his welfare.’