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by Georg Feuerstein (with Brenda Feuerstein)
The Bhagavad-Gītā (“Lord’s Song”) is the most popular scripture of Hinduism. Although composed over 2,000 years ago, its activist message is still relevant today, perhaps more so than ever. We live in a time of great social and environmental crisis, and the wisdom teaching of Krishna has much to offer us, even if we must appropriately bracket its militaristic orientation. When Krishna imparted his activist Yoga to his disciple Prince Arjuna, the latter was on the battle field facing the immediate prospect of killing relatives and honored teachers who for various reasons had gathered on the enemy’s side. Naturally, Arjuna found himself in a significant personal quandary—a dilemma that is symbolic of all of life’s great predicaments.
The Bharata war with its eighteen battles was probably a historical event long ago, which was remembered by generations of bards until Vyāsa Dvaipāyana (“Island-born Arranger”)—whoever he may have been—artfully crafted a magnificent epic, from which rural and, to some degree, also urban Indians still derive inspiration. Various dates for the war have been proposed—notably 3102 B.C. (the beginning of the Age of Darkness, or kali-yuga), 2000 B.C., 1500 B.C., and 900 B.C.—which are all speculative. While the first date seems far too early, the last seems too late. While there may well be numerous echoes of historical realities in Vyāsa’s epic, it appears to be impossible to separate fact from fiction. In any case, chronology is not as important as the message of the Mahābhārata epic.
The gist of Krishna’s teaching is that when the moral and spiritual welfare of a people are at stake, war is permissible. The epic and its Gītā episode revolve around the value of moral integrity—the “law” (dharma). It is no accident that the Gītā begins with the word dharma. In the first stanza of the Gītā, we find the phrase dharma-kshetra (“field of the law”) juxtaposed to the phrase kuru-kshetra (“field of the Kurus”), the battle field on which so many warriors lost their lives. We can readily understand this allegorically in the sense of life itself being a battle field on which good and evil, or right and wrong, are articulated in every moment.
However, a literal interpretation seems also possible (see the Mānava-Dharma-Shāstra 2.19) whereby dharma-kshetra designates the culture area of the sacred land of the Vedic people who aspired to abide by civilized laws in consonance with the cosmic order (rita), as revealed by the great seers and sages.
Whether we choose a metaphorical or a literal interpretation of the Bharata war, we can learn from—and faithfully translate—the Gītā even when we must question some of its tenets or moral injunctions. Thus, as a pacifist, I can still condone and applaud much of the Gītā’s wisdom. I have personally taken its warrior ethics as an occasion to once again reflect on my own preferred attitude to life and as a result have achieved greater clarity about my own sentiments and convictions.
We do not have to accept the Gītā’s—or any other traditional scripture’s—teaching uncritically. In fact, this would prove unhelpful and even adverse for us. The only proper way to relate to any type of knowledge is with an open mind, which is yet not like a sieve through which anything can pass freely, without critical inspection. The light of inspired reason (buddhi), which the Gītā holds in such high esteem, ought to be applied under all circumstances. I maintain that Krishna would not want us to abandon reason. Even though he argued in favor of military action on the part of Prince Arjuna, a highly trained and incredibly skillful archer, Krishna left the final choice up to Arjuna, expecting that his disciple would consider his divine counsel carefully (that is, rationally).
I would even argue that the Gītā is constructive for us only to the degree that we engage this traditional scripture with a sensitive and empathetic but analytical mind. The popular notion that one ought to suspend reason in metaphysical matters and resort to belief is unsound. On the contrary, the ultimate concerns of metaphysics are so vitally important that we should ponder them with the most excellent part of our mind, which is buddhi. As the grammatical root budh (“to be aware, awake”) of this Sanskrit term suggests, buddhi is a mental faculty that is marked by alertness and lucidity—viz. wisdom.
Since the Mahābhārata epic, of which the Gītā can be said to be its ethical-philosophical essence, is reckoned to belong to both the category of itihāsa, or history, and kāvya, or inspired literature at the hands of a sage (kavi), we can look upon the Gītā in a similar way and appreciate both its historical and its symbolic-allegorical flavor. The latter perspective allows us to understand the central motif of the eighteen-day battle also in a figurative rather than a literal sense. In other words, the Gītā’s militaristic ethics need not be limited to a historical actuality but can readily be interpreted as being symbolic of the larger struggle of life. Be that as it may, I propose that whether we understand the Mahābhārata war in literal or allegorical terms, the Gītā’s message has lost none of its vitality and relevance over the course of centuries.
In view of the large number of available Gītā translations, it has become customary to apologize for offering yet another rendering. I will refrain from doing so, for two reasons. I believe that my translation along with my commentary and notes has merit amidst the spate of numerous popular paraphrases, which often cause discerning readers to wonder about the accuracy of the translation before them.
The present rendering with prefatorial commentary represents a thoroughly revised version of my book The Bhagavad-Gītā: Yoga of Contemplation and Action published in an Indian edition in 1980, which I withdrew from circulation shortly after its publication.
Of the numerous Sanskrit works on Yoga, two scriptures have become favorites of more dedicated students of Yoga—the Yoga-Sūtra attributed to Patanjali and the Bhagavad-Gītā ascribed to Vyāsa. These can be considered foundational Yoga texts. While the former work addresses primarily ascetics, the latter is a gospel mainly for the grihastha-yogin, or spiritual practitioner who is a householder with a busy family life. Not surprisingly, the Gītā generally holds the stronger appeal for contemporary practitioners of Yoga. Unknowingly, even the larger public in the Western world has come under the spell of this classic in the form of the 2000 Hollywood hit The Legend of Bagger Vance, directed by Robert Redford, which demonstrated that the spiritual teaching of Krishna can be applied even on the “battle field” of golf. The question is whether an unprepared movie audience can lastingly benefit from such a brief exposure to the dharma in the context of what is intended to be entertainment. Probably not.
There is, perhaps, a slightly better possibility of this happening with the millions of practitioners of so-called Postural Yoga in the Western hemisphere, as they mature. I hope that those few who have touched Yoga’s spiritual dimension will delve into the depth of the Gītā’s pristine spirituality. May this translation guide them in their studies.
1. On Translating the Bhagavad-Gītā
The Bhagavad-Gītā is a fairly short Sanskrit scripture composed in pre-classical Sanskrit between 400–300 B.C. Many of its melodious verses are straightforward, but many are neither linguistically simple nor philosophically readily comprehended. It is undoubtedly the simple verses and the overall dramatic setting of this scripture which allowed this text to enjoy growing popularity over the centuries. To be sure, some stanzas are downright problematic for the translator and call for deeper study. Popular translations tend to gloss over these difficulties and often end up misrepresenting the Sanskrit original.
The present rendering of the Bhagavad-Gītā—Gītā in short—is based on K. Belvalkar’s (1947) critical edition of the Mahābhārata epic in which the Gītā is embedded in book 6 (= bhīshma-parvan, sections 23–40), and it includes interesting variant verses found in some of the Sanskrit manuscripts collated by Belvalkar and his team of scholars.
This translation differs from most others in at least one important respect: It is far more literal than previous renderings in order to preserve as much of the idiosyncrasies and intended meanings of the original as possible. Some translators have argued that literalness obscures rather than illuminates the meaning of the Sanskrit text and that its intent is better preserved by a free rendering. This objection, however, merely seems to have served as an excuse for bypassing a critical examination of both text and context.
Glancing at the vast available literature on the Bhagavad-Gītā, several major approaches in the translation/interpretation of this ancient scripture can be distinguished.
1. The earliest attempt to make the Bhagavad-Gītā accessible to the English public was the rendering by Charles Wilkins in 1785, translated into French by Abbé M. Parraud in 1787. Wilkin’s translation has all the shortcomings of a first-time rendering. He left many Sanskrit terms untranslated and poorly transliterated (e.g., “moonee” for muni), and he also chose something of a Biblical style, with Latin words thrown in. This translation in a way gave rise to three distinct but often overlapping approaches (1) the philological
/antiquarian approach, (2) the spiritual/hortatory orientation, and (3) the poetic approach.
2. Characteristic of the first category, which is chiefly concerned with grammatical accuracy and scholarly minutiae, are the early translations by August Wilhelm von Schlegel (1823), Christian Lassen (1846), Kashinath Trimbak Telang (1882, which was included as volume 8 in F. Max Müller’s famous Sacred Books of the East series), Richard Garbe (1905), and Franklin Edgerton (1925). Here also belong the twentieth-century translations, among others, by Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1948), R. C. Zaehner (1966), J. A. B. van Buitenen (1973-5), K. Bolle (1979), and Richard Gotshalk (1985).
3. Representative of the second group are renderings like those of Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood (1944) and Swami Bhaktivedanta Prabhupada (1986). To this category belong also many of the translations which retain a more traditionalist outlook and are far less sensitive to the textual and semantic complexities of the Gītā. A remarkable piece of work in this group is the study by Shri Krishna Prem (1969). The central weakness of the spiritual/hortatory approach is its distinct disinterest in philological/historical matters.
4. Largely in response to the philological/antiquarian approach, which was felt to downplay the Gītā’s aesthetic beauty, some students of the Gītā launched into a poetic treatment of the text. The generally defective linguistic and philosophical treatment found in such works is due to the uncompromising subjugation of the criteria of meaning and accuracy to principles of metre, rhyme, and rhythm. The best known poetic paraphrase is that by Edwin Arnold (1939). More recent attempts are those by Geoffrey Parrinder (1974) and Juan Mascaró (1962).
5. Still further removed from the original meaning of the Bhagavad-Gītā is the spawning popular literature, which is lacking in interpretative power, accuracy, and beauty. This could almost be thought of as constituting a separate approach were it not for its defectiveness.
To demonstrate the weakness of emphatically poetic translations, I wish to single out Juan Mascaró’s (1962) rendering. See, for instance, his translation of verse 2.47:
Set thy heart upon thy work, but never
on the reward thereof. Work not for a
reward; but never cease to do thy work.
This does not at all reflect the profound spirit of the original. The Sanskrit text literally says:
In action alone is your rightful-interest, never in [its] fruit. Let not your motive be the fruit of action; nor let your attachment be to inaction.
Mascaró gets the first half right, providing we do not ask what specifically is meant by “reward.” But he misses the point of the second hemistich. The phrase “never cease to do thy work” should properly be rendered as “nor let your attachment be to inaction”—which is somewhat different. For the Bhagavad-Gītā is primarily interested in our attitude toward the performance of actions. It is concerned with our attachment or nonattachment to things. Inaction may be appropriate under certain conditions, just as action may prove to be the right course (which it frequently is). This does not come across in Mascaró’s version.
Another example is verse 7. 30, which Mascaró misinterprets thus:
They know me in earth and in heaven, and in
the fire of sacrifice. Their souls are pure, in
harmony, and even when their time to go
comes they see me.
As opposed to this, Krishna’s actual words are:
Those yoked-minded [yogins] who know Me [as] the elemental-basis, [as] the divine-basis, along with the sacrificial-basis, and [who know] Me also at the time of going-forth [i.e., at death]—[they indeed] know.
The important and undoubtedly difficult Sanskrit terms adhibhūta, adhidaiva, and adhiyajna cannot simply be equated with “earth,” “heaven” and “fire of sacrifice” respectively. No straightforward equivalent renderings are possible in English, and so I am using admittedly awkward circumscriptions, viz. “elemental-basis,” “divine-basis,” and “sacrificial-basis.” It is clear from the prefix adhi- in each case that we have here adjectives or adjectival nouns. Also, the phrase “their souls are pure” cannot be found in the Sanskrit original at all. Such instances of textual misrepresentation could easily be multiplied, also from other renderings.
In an attempt to do justice to the message of the Gītā, I have introduced several devices which will enable the reader to judge for himself where the dividing line is between translation and interpretation.
Thus, I have made extensive use of hyphens and brackets in my translation. I have employed hyphens to indicate implied words (viz. bhārata “descendant-of-Bharata”) or in the case of compound words, such as svabhāva “own-being,” svadharma “own-law,” samsiddhi “full-accomplishment”), and so forth.
Words enclosed in square brackets are mainly those that are required in translation in order to convey the meaning of the habitually concise Sanskrit sentences. In a few instances, the bracketed parts are purely explanatory. On the whole, the brackets can simply be disregarded during reading. Their main function is to mark out those parts of the translation which are not to be found directly in the Sanskrit original. This method provides the reader with a reliable yardstick against which he can check other translations.
All Sanskrit terms added to clarify the translation are put in round brackets.
In general, I have used the same English word for a given Sanskrit term, wherever this seemed allowable by the context.
Regarding the frequent terms ātman and purusha, I have for the sake of convenience used “Self” for the former and “Spirit” for the latter, unless purusha clearly stands for “man.” The term ātman involves the additional difficulty that it can refer either to the transcendental “Self” or to the empirical “self,” as well as stand for the reflexive pronoun “oneself,” “itself,” etc. Moreover, I have retained the use of plural or singular in accordance with the Sanskrit original, even at the risk of my rendering sounding a bit odd at times.
With hundreds of Gītā translations into English and other languages in existence (if not in print), it would be foolhardy to think that any one translation could possibly be “final.” Therefore, the most I can claim for my own rendering is that it is based on my earnest effort to capture as much as possible of the spirit of this time-honored work and also to do justice to its language as best I could, though realizing that my approach of textual and contextual fidelity cannot also at the same time reflect the Gītā’s melodious quality.
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Copyright ©2008 by Georg Feuerstein. All rights reserved.
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