81 Facts About Gita

Gita is set in a narrative framework of a dialogue between Pandava prince Arjuna and his guide and charioteer Krishna, the Personality of Godhead.

Bhagavad Gita is the most revered of all the Hindu texts, and has a unique pan-Hindu influence.

The Hinduism scholar Jeaneane Fowler, in her commentary on the Gita, considers second century BCE to be the probable date of composition.

Gita cites similar quotes in the Dharmasutra texts, the Brahma sutras, and other literature to conclude that the Bhagavad Gita was composed in the fifth or fourth century BCE.

Linguistically, the Bhagavad Gita is in classical Sanskrit of the early variety, states the Gita scholar Winthrop Sargeant.

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The dating of the Gita is thus dependent on the uncertain dating of the Mahabharata.

Bhagavad Gita is the best known, and most influential of Hindu scriptures.

Bhagavad Gita is part of the Prasthanatrayi, which includes the Upanishads and Brahma sutras.

The Bhagavad Gita is a "summation of the Vedanta", states Sargeant.

Bhagavad Gita is the sealing achievement of the Hindu synthesis, incorporating its various religious traditions.

The Indologist Robert Minor, and others, in contrast, state the Gita is "more clearly defined as a synthesis of Vedanta, Yoga and Samkhya" philosophies of Hinduism.

One must do the right thing because one has determined that it is right, states Gita, without craving for its fruits, without worrying about the results, loss or gain.

The Gita synthesis goes further, according to its interpreters such as Swami Vivekananda, and the text states that there is Living God in every human being and the devoted service to this Living God in everyone – without craving for personal rewards – is a means to spiritual development and liberation.

The Gita disapproves of these, stating that not only is it against the tradition but against Krishna himself, because "Krishna dwells within all beings, in torturing the body the ascetic would be torturing him", states Flood.

Gita synthesizes several paths to spiritual realization based on the premise that people are born with different temperaments and tendencies .

The Bhagavad Gita, states Raju, is a great synthesis of the ideas of the impersonal spiritual monism with personal God, of "the yoga of action with the yoga of transcendence of action, and these again with yogas of devotion and knowledge".

Bhagavad Gita manuscript is found in the sixth book of the Mahabharata manuscripts – the Bhisma-parvan.

The Bhagavad Gita is often preserved and studied on its own, as an independent text with its chapters renumbered from 1 to 18.

Variant manuscripts of the Gita have been found on the Indian subcontinent Unlike the enormous variations in the remaining sections of the surviving Mahabharata manuscripts, the Gita manuscripts show only minor variations and the meaning is the same.

Adi Shankara, in his 8th-century commentary, explicitly states that the Gita has 700 verses, which was likely a deliberate declaration to prevent further insertions and changes to the Gita.

Bhagavad Gita is a poem written in the Sanskrit language.

Gita is a dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna right before the start of the climactic Kurukshetra War in the Hindu epic Mahabharata.

Gita sees that some among his enemies are his own relatives, beloved friends, and revered teachers.

Gita turns to his charioteer and guide Krishna, for advice on the rationale for war, his choices and the right thing to do.

The Bhagavad Gita is the compilation of Arjuna's questions and moral dilemma, Krishna's answers and insights that elaborate on a variety of philosophical concepts.

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The Bhagavad Gita is opened by setting the stage of the Kurukshetra battlefield.

Gita equates himself to being the father and the mother of the universe, to being the Om, to the three Vedas, to the seed, the goal of life, the refuge and abode of all.

Gita reveals how his divine being in greater detail, as the ultimate cause of all material and spiritual existence, one who transcends all opposites and who is beyond any duality.

Gita says he is the atman in all beings, Arjuna's innermost Self, compassionate Vishnu, Surya, Indra, Shiva-Rudra, Ananta, Yama, as well as the Om, Vedic sages, time, Gayatri mantra, and the science of Self-knowledge.

Gita says that he is Rama when he says, "Among the wielders of weapons, I am Rama".

Gita can be projected as "a merciful father, a divine mother, a wise friend, a passionate beloved, or even a mischievous child", according to Easwaran.

Gita describes the difference between transient perishable physical body and the immutable eternal Self .

The 13th chapter of the Gita offers the clearest enunciation of the Samkhya philosophy, states Basham, by explaining the difference between field and the knower, prakriti and purusha.

Gita adopts the Upanishadic concept of Absolute Reality, a shift from the earlier ritual-driven Vedic religion to one abstracting and internalizing spiritual experiences.

The Gita accepts atman as the pure, unchanging, ultimate real essence, experiencer of one's being.

Gita considers the world to be transient, all bodies and matter as impermanent.

Gita teaches several spiritual paths – jnana, bhakti and karma – to the divine.

The theme that unites these paths in the Gita is "inner renunciation" where one is unattached to personal rewards during one's spiritual journey.

Gita teaches the path of Karma yoga in Chapter 3 and others.

The Gita teaches, according to Fowler, that the action should be undertaken after proper knowledge has been applied to gain the full perspective of "what the action should be".

The chapter 4 of the Bhagavad Gita is dedicated to the general exposition of jnana yoga.

Gita praises the path, calling the jnana yogin to be exceedingly dear to Krishna, but adds that the path is steep and difficult.

Gita rejects ascetic life, renunciation as well as Brahminical Vedic ritualism where outwardly actions or non-action are considered a means of personal rewards in this life, after-life or a means of liberation.

The Gita message emphasizes that the personal moral confusion and struggle must be addressed, the warrior needs to rise beyond "personal and social values" and understand what is at stake and "why he must fight", states Miller.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, in his commentary on the Gita, interprets the battle as "an allegory in which the battlefield is the soul and Arjuna, man's higher impulses struggling against evil".

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Gita saw the main message as the bravery and courage of Arjuna to fight as a warrior.

Bal Gangadhar Tilak saw the Gita as defending killing when necessary for the betterment of society, such as, for example, the killing of Afzal Khan.

The Gita, while including impersonal Nirguna Brahman as the goal, mainly revolves around the relationship between the Self and a personal God or Saguna Brahman.

Some ideas in the Bhagavad Gita connect it to the Shatapatha Brahmana of Yajurveda.

The ideas at the center of Vedic rituals in Shatapatha Brahmana and the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita revolve around this absolute Person, the primordial genderless absolute, which is same as the goal of Pancaratra Agama and Tantra.

Translations and interpretations of the Gita have been so diverse that these have been used to support apparently contradictory political and philosophical values.

For example, Galvin Flood and Charles Martin note that interpretations of the Gita have been used to support "pacifism to aggressive nationalism" in politics, from "monism to theism" in philosophy.

Gita has been translated into European languages other than English.

In 1808, passages from the Gita were part of the first direct translation of Sanskrit into German, appearing in a book through which Friedrich Schlegel became known as the founder of Indian philology in Germany.

Gita Press has published the Gita in multiple Indian languages.

Paramahansa Yogananda's commentary on the Bhagavad Gita called God Talks with Arjuna: The Bhagavad Gita has been translated into Spanish, German, Thai and Hindi so far.

The book is significant in that unlike other commentaries of the Bhagavad Gita, which focus on karma yoga, jnana yoga, and bhakti yoga in relation to the Gita, Yogananda's work stresses the training of one's mind, or raja yoga.

Bhagavad Gita is referred to in the Brahma Sutras, and numerous scholars including Shankara, Bhaskara, Abhinavagupta of Shaivism tradition, Ramanuja and Madhvacharya wrote commentaries on it.

Many of these commentators state that the Gita is "meant to be a moksa-shastra, and not a dharmasastra, an arthasastra or a kamasastra", states Sharma.

Shankara prefaces his comments by stating that the Gita is popular among the laity, that the text has been studied and commented upon by earlier scholars, but "I have found that to the laity it appears to teach diverse and quite contradictory doctrines".

Gita calls the Gita as "an epitome of the essentials of the whole Vedic teaching".

The Gita text he commented on is a slightly different recension than the one of Adi Shankara.

Gita interprets its teachings in the Shaiva Advaita tradition quite similar to Adi Shankara, but with the difference that he considers both Self and matter to be metaphysically real and eternal.

Bhagavad Gita has been highly praised, not only by prominent Indians including Mahatma Gandhi and Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, but by Aldous Huxley, Henry David Thoreau, J Robert Oppenheimer, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Carl Jung, Herman Hesse, and Bulent Ecevit.

At a time when Indian nationalists were seeking an indigenous basis for social and political action against colonial rule, Bhagavad Gita provided them with a rationale for their activism and fight against injustice.

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World's largest Bhagavad Gita is in the ISKCON Temple Delhi, which is the world's largest sacred book of any religion.

On 27 February 2021, the Bhagavad Gita, was launched into outer space in a SD card, on a PSLV-C51 rocket launched by the Indian Space Research Organisation from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota.

In light of the Ahimsa teachings in Hindu scriptures, the Gita has been criticized as violating the Ahimsa value, or alternatively, as supporting political violence.

Gita argues that the ethics of the Gita are so ambiguous, that one can use it to justify any ethical position.

Narla argues that the Gita is mainly a theological argument in favor of the warrior ethos.

Narla argues that the fact that the Gita tries constantly to make Arjuna kill his kin in order to gain a petty kingdom shows it is not a pacifist work.

Kosambi argued that the Gita was written as a religious text that could provide support for the actions of the upper castes, including the warrior caste.

For Gandhi, the Gita is teaching that people should fight for justice and righteous values, that they should never meekly suffer injustice to avoid a war.

Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk and author of books on Zen Buddhism, concurs with Gandhi and states that the Gita is not teaching violence nor propounding a "make war" ideology.

Gita has been cited and criticized as a Hindu text that supports varna-dharma and the caste system.

Narla critiques the Gita for stating that those who are not kshatriyas or brahmins are "born from sinful wombs".

Gita is advised by Krishna to do his sva-dharma, a term that has been variously interpreted.

For Vivekananda, the Gita was an egalitarian scripture that rejected caste and other hierarchies because of its verses such as 13.

Further, states Hirst, the Gita should be seen as a "unitary text" in its entirety rather than a particular verse analyzed separately or out of context.

The Gita is a cohesively knit pedagogic text, not a list of norms.

Steven Pressfield acknowledges that the Gita was his inspiration, the golfer character in his novel is Arjuna, the caddie is Krishna, states Rosen.