Bhagvad-Gita: Treatise of Self-help

Bhagavad-Gita is the most beautiful, perhaps the only true philosophical song existing in any known tongue’ – so opined William von Humboldt. The spiritual ethos and the philosophical outlook that the Bhagvad - Gita postulates paves the way for the liberation of man, who, as Rousseau said, ‘being born free, is everywhere in chains’. But equally it is a mirror of human psychology, which enables man to discern his debilities for appropriate redressal. All the same, the boon of an oral tradition that kept it alive for over two millennia became its bane with the proliferation of interpolations therein. Besides muddying its pristine philosophy, these insertions affect the sequential conformity and structural economy of the grand discourse. What is worse, to the chagrin of the majority of the Hindus, some of these legitimize the inimical caste system while upholding the priestly perks and prejudices. This rendition seeks to restore to the Gita, its original character by ridding it of hundred and nine interpolations, which tend to keep the skeptics away from it. And ironically these muddle the understanding as well. In the theatre of man as nothing surpasses the drama of war, the stage for unveiling the Gita’s unrivalled philosophy was set on the battleground of Kurukshetra at the threshold of the battle of Mahabharata. In this novel rendition, the beauty of the Gita’s Sanskrit slokas is reflected in the rhythmic flow of the English verse of poetic proportions even as the attendant philosophy, sans its inane interpolations, is captured in contemporary idiom for easy comprehension.