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The Bhagavad Gita
BUG-uh-vud GEE-tah
Also Known As The Gita
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A Sanskrit scripture of seven hundred verses embedded in the Bhishma Parva of the Mahabharata, presenting a dialogue between the warrior Arjuna and his charioteer Krishna on duty (dharma), disciplined action without attachment to its fruits, and the paths to liberation. Ralph Waldo Emerson read it in translation, called it the first of books in an 1845 journal entry, and drew on it directly for his 1857 poem Brahma.
Facts
Disputed
Publication YearThe Gita's date of composition is one of the most contested questions in the field: most scholars place it between roughly 200 BCE and 200 CE, with individual estimates ranging as early as the 5th to 4th century BCE (Kashi Nath Upadhyaya) to the 2nd century BCE (Jeaneane Fowler) to around 150 BCE (Robert N. Minor); traditional Hindu chronology places the underlying Mahabharata war, and so the Gita, far earlier still, around 3100 BCE. The dating depends heavily on the equally uncertain dating of the larger Mahabharata, into which the Gita may have been inserted after the epic's earliest layers. A final form is generally thought reached by the early Gupta period, around the 4th century CE. Original Language Cross-Tradition Connections
In Branch
The Gita's teaching on the nature of the self (atman) and its relation to ultimate reality (brahman) is a metaphysical doctrine as much as an ethical one.
Influenced
Emerson called the Gita the first of books in his 1845 journal and drew on it directly for his 1857 poem Brahma.
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