The Bhagavadgita

The Bhagavadgita, or 'Sacred Song', holds an assured place among the world's great scriptures. In fourteen hundred lines of verse, the relationship of man with God-and the intense joy of divine love-are celebrated, in a language that is precise and beautiful.

The Gita is a tale of action, taking the form of a dialogue between Arjuna and Krishna on the eve of a battle. Krishna teaches the fearful Arjuna the need for action and the requirement that he-like all mankind-take his place in the world in love and faith. Only through the search for God and the Absolute will the true self be discovered.

This edition of the Bhagavadgita offers the Sanskrit text as well as Radhakrishnan's English translation and a commentary that has become a classic. His clear understanding of the profound wisdom contained within the Gita ensures an equally clear vision of its powerful and eternal message, one that cannot fail to touch the minds and spirits of all those who reach for it.

Professor S. Radhakrishnan (1888-1975) was a prominent philosopher, author and educationalist. He was equally at home in the European and Asiatic traditions of thought, and devoted an immense amount of energy to interpreting Indian religion, culture and philosophy for the rest of the world. He was a visiting professor at many foreign universities, and served as India's Ambassador Extraordinary to the USSR from 1949 to 1952. He was elected to the office of vice-president of India in 1957. He became the President of India in 1962 and held this rank until 1967, when he retired from public life.

He wrote a number of books for readers the world over. Some of his outstanding works are The Hindu View of Life, An Idealist View of Life and Indian Philosophy, Vols. I and 11.

He dedicated this translation to Mahatma Gandhi.

War and post-war periods tend to bring into prominence the value of sciences, especially their practical applications. These are important for the conduct of wars and the comfort of citizens in peace. But if we have to give largeness and wisdom to men's outlook on life, we should lay stress on humanities also. The relation of sciences to humanities may be stated roughly to be one of means to ends. In our enthusiasm for the means we should not overlook the ends. The concepts of right and wrong do not belong to the sphere of science; yet it is on the study of the ideas centring round these concepts that human action and happiness ultimately depend. A balanced culture should bring the two great halves into harmony. The Bhagavadgita is a valuable aid for the understanding of the supreme ends of life.

There are many editions of the Bhagavadgita and several good English translations of it and there would be no justification for another, if all that was needed for English readers was a bare translation. Those who read the Gita in English need notes at least as much as those who read it in Sanskrit, if they are not to miss their way in it. The classical commentaries indicate to us what the Gita meant to the commentators and their contemporaries. Every scripture has two sides, one temporary and perishable, belonging to the ideas of the people of the period and the country in which it is produced, and the other eternal and imperishable, and applicable to all ages and countries. The intellectual expression and the psychological idiom are the products of time while the permanent truths are capable of being lived and seen by a higher than intellectual vision at all times. The vitality of a classic consists in its power to produce from time to time men who confirm and correct from their own experience truths enunciated in it. The commentators speak to us from experience and express in a new form, a form relevant to their age and responsive to its needs, the ancient wisdom of the scripture. All great doctrine, as it is repeated in the course of centuries, is coloured by the reflections of the age in which it appears and bears the imprint of the individual who restates it. Our times are different; our habits of thought, the mental background to which we relate our experience, are not quite the same as those of the classical commentators. The chief problem facing us today is the reconciliation of mankind. The Gita is specially suited for the purpose, as it attempts to reconcile varied and apparently antithetical forms of the religious consciousness and emphasizes the root conceptions of religion which are neither ancient nor modem but eternal and belong to the very flesh of humanity, past, present and future. History poses our problems, and if we restate old principles in new ways, it is not because we will to do so but because we must. Such a restatement of the truths of eternity in the accents of our time is the only way in which a great scripture can be of living value to mankind. From this point of view, the general Introduction and the Notes may perhaps be found useful by the intelligent reader. There are many points in the detailed interpretations of the Gita where there are differences among scholars. I have not done more than call attention to them in the Notes as the book is intended for the general reader who wishes to enlarge his spiritual environment rather than for the specialist.

A translation to serve its purpose must be as clear as its substance will permit. It must be readable without being shallow, modern without being unsympathetic. But no translation of the Gita can bring out the dignity and grace of the original. Its melody and magic of phrase are difficult to recapture in another medium. The translator's anxiety is to render the thought, but he cannot convey fully the spirit. He cannot evoke in the reader the mood in which the thought was born and induce in him the ecstacy of the seer and the vision he beholds. Realizing that, for me at any rate, it is difficult to bring out, through the medium of English, the dignity of phrase and the intensity of utterance, I have given the text in Roman script also so that those who know Sanskrit can rise to a full comprehension of the meaning of the Gita by pondering over the Sanskrit original. Those who do not know Sanskrit will get a fairly correct idea of the spirit of the poem from the beautiful English rendering by Sir Edwin Arnold. It is so full of ease and grace and has a flavour of its own which makes it acceptable to all but those who are scrupulous about scholarly accuracy.

I am much indebted to Professor M. Hiriyanna who read the typescript and Professor Franklin Edgerton who read the proofs for their valuable advice and help.