Juan Mascaro (trans.) - The Bhagavad Gita

Translated from the Sanskrit by
JUAN MASCAR
With an introduction by
SIMON BRODBECK

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This translation first published 1962
Reprinted with new Chronology, Introduction and Further Reading 2003

Copyright Juan Mascar, 1962
Chronology, Introduction and Further Reading copyright Simon Brodbeck, 2003
All rights reserved

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EISBN: 9780141902678

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The translator wishes to tender grateful acknowledgements to the following for permission to quote copyright passages in his Introduction:

Methuen & Co., Publishers, Ltd, London, for quotations from the Vedas, translated by J. Mascar in his Anthology Lamps of Fire.

John Murray, Publishers, Ltd, London, for quotations from the Upanishads, translated by J. Mascar under the title Himalayas of the Soul.

J.M.

This volume is dedicated to Hugh lAnson Fausset.

CHRONOLOGY

Dating Indian texts is extremely difficult, partly because many of them were continuously compiled over long periods. The vagueness of the following scheme reflects this.

INTRODUCTION

The Bhagavad Gita is a small excerpt of the Mahabharata. The Mahabharata is the larger of the two Indian epics, the other being the Ramayana. The period of their composition, 500 BCE500 CE, was one of extreme textual proliferation. Both epics intriguingly present the kind of esoteric discourse (on various ritual, cosmological and religio-philosophical matters) prevalent amongst the Brahminical priestly-academic lite, within a framework derived from more popular storytelling traditions. Each is a story, a narrative of various characters and their adventures. Other stories are also told within the narrative, and the main characters reflect on these stories in ways which suggest how the reader might reflect on theirs. Although the Sanskrit epics were more or less fixed in their extended, digressional literary format in the early centuries of the Common Era, their stories exist in diverse versions in dramatic, bardic and literary contexts which continue to change and develop in the present day.

The Bhagavad Gita takes place at a critical point deep within the Mahabharata. Two vast armies stand mustered and almost ready to close in battle. The assembled warriors come from the length and breadth of the known world. The dispute they hope to resolve is one of kingdom and honour between rival sets of cousins, the Pandavas, sons of Pandu, and the Kauravas, sons of Dhritarashtra, Pandus blind elder brother. Though ineligible for kingship, Dhritarashtra has been regent of the realm and guardian of the crown princes after Pandus early retirement and death. He had partitioned the kingdom, but his sons had arranged a gambling match, won a thirteen-year loan of the Pandavas half, and then refused to return it, precipitating war.

Arjuna, the most distinguished warrior in the Pandava army, surveys his adversaries and expresses to Krishna, his charioteer and great friend, his resolve not to fight. The opposing forces contain many with whom the Pandavas have no quarrel: moreover, these include highly esteemed teachers and elders. Arjunas scruples centre on the imagined personal consequences of fighting: his guilt for the decimation of his people. Krishna speaks with him the