Bhagavadgita is a philosophical poem of 700 verses divided into 18 cantos. It is believed to be a dialogue between Lord Krishna and Arjuna in the battlefield when the armies of both the sides were standing ready for battle. Arjuna hesitates to fight being shocked at the thought of slaying his own kinsfolk and preceptors. Lord Krishna expounds to him the great truth of real duty and knowledge of the self so as to inspire into him the spirit of selfless service. The poem sets forth elaborately the eternal nature of the souls, the needs for proper performance of one’s own Dharma, the value of Karma or selfless action, ‘&anama\’ or spiritual knowledge and ‘Bai>’ or incessant devotion as the means of attaining liberation from the bondage of worldly existence. The doctrine of self surrender, the lesson of detachment from the fruits of one’s own action and numerous other similar great principles of Hindu Philosophy are all compressed in the Gita and it has therefore been all along the most popular and adored treatises on Hindu Philosophy.
Numberless philosophers like Sankara, Ramanuja and Madhva have commented onit. All the vernacular and foreign languages have translations and commentaries on the Gita. In short it is the greatest and the most popular work in the Indian Philosophical Literature.
Though tradition
holds the Bhagavadgita to be a portion of Bhishma Parva of Mahabharataam,
Scholars of research have refuted such a view. A long poem of 700 verses
dealing with intricate and serious codes of philosophy could not have been
spoken of on the field of battle. Originally there might have been a brief
dialogue between
But Shankara recognises the Gita as a portion of the great epic and the great poet Bana also speaks of it in the same strain. So this Bhagavadgita must have been assimilated into the Mahabharatam much before Bana’s time i.e. 7th century A.D.
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