Gita Ramesh Mukhopadhyaya

...
A Study of the GITAS in the Mahabharata
Rameshchandra Mukhopadhyaya
(b.1947), the author of this book is
the grandson of Dr. Benoytosh
Bhattacharya, once upon a time
Director of Gaekward Oriental
Research Institute Baroda and great
grandson of Mahamahopadhyaya
Haraprasad Shastri. A triple M.A.
Mukhopadhyaya was a Reader in
English at B.B.College, Asansol. He
did his M.Phil. in Comparative
Literature and he did his Ph.D in Pali
literature. He has more than twenty
books to his credit and he is one of
the soldiers of the avant garde
underground Literature Movement in
Bengali literature.
i ii
... A Study of the GITAS in the Mahabharata
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A Study of the GITAS in the Mahabharata
by Rameshchandra Mukhopadhyaya
Message from God made :

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iii iv
Dedicated
To
Mm. Ananta Lal Thakur,
A philosopher par excellence,
A teacher of teachers
and a Rishi
v vi
Foreword
Gita in Sanskrit literature is a literary genre in its

own right. When we speak of the Gita it is Srimad
Bhagavad Gita, where Krishna speaks at the battle
ground. But the Mahabharata is littered with a
number of gitas besides the Gita.Taking the cue
from Mm. Ananta Lal Thakur the present author
seeks to read the gitas in the Mahabharata including
Bhagavad Gita from the close reading context in the
main. Consequently, this book has been an attempt
at the comparative study of the gitas in the
Mahabharata. If it provokes further discussions on
the many gitas in Sanskrit literature, the author will
feel gratified.
The publication of the book would never be
possible if Biplab Majee, an avant garde Bengali
poet had not stressed the active cooperation.
Om tat sat
Rameshchandra Mukhopadhyaya
vii viii
CONTENTS
Introduction .... 11
Vritra gita .... 26
Harita gita .... 38
Bodhya gita .... 43
Manki gita .... 50
Sadja gita .... 57
Vichakhnu gita .... 65
Sampaka gita .... 69
Parasara gita .... 71
Anu gita I .... 77
Anu gita II .... 105
Utathya gita .... 125
Vamdeva gita .... 129
Rishava gita .... 131
Hamsa gita .... 135
Brahma gita .... 137
The Bhagavad Gita .... 139
The Prakiti .... 150
Three Gunas .... 155
The Ahamkara .... 159
Purusa .... 160
The Archetype of Purusasukta SriVisnu .... 163
Krishna .... 165
Time .... 171
The world .... 172
The Individual Soul or the Jivatman .... 176
Caste systems .... 180
The ideal way of life .... 186
Rehtoric of the gitas .... 188
Different Planes of Reality .... 214
Gitas compared .... 219
Message of the gita-I .... 230
Message of gita-II .... 235
The gitas and the Mahabharata .... 244
ix x
12 ... A Study of the GITAS in the Mahabharata
Mahabharata has had no interpolation. Because the extant version of

CHAPTER - I
the Mahabharata is told by Sauti. Sauti, heard it from Vaisampayana.
INTRODUCTION Vaisampayana learnt it from Vedavyasa. Vedavyasa composed the
Mm. Ananta Thakur argues in one of his treatises that even if we Mahabharata itself. May be Vedavyasa had composed only 24000
delete the Srimad Bhagavad Gita from the extant text of the verses which expanded into the Mahabharata as it is. Thus the
Mahabharata the message of the Bhagavad Gita will be easily Mahabharata is an instance of the epic of growth. Those who would
discernible from any and every part of what is left of the vast narrative. not see eye to eye with this interpretation of the story of the growth of
He further observes that there are a number of gitas besides the the Mahabharata as a narrative will agree that the same Mahabharata,
Bhagavad Gita scattered in the vast epic. Together they echo the was composed of 60 lakh verses to be read in heaven. It consisted of
message of the Bhagavad Gita only. Mm. Thakur is a Naiyayika or a 30 lakh verses to be read in the Gandharvaloka. And it was made of
logician Indian style par excellence. He employs his logic to the end of 1 lakh verses to be read on the earth. Besides Vedavyasa wrote the
his conclusion. On one side, he proves his point with the aid of negation. Mahabharata consisting of 24000 slokas as well. The Mahabharata
Delete the Bhagavad Gita from the text and yet one can reconstruct itself says that it could be read in abridged form as well as in enlarged
the message of the Bhagavad Gita from what remains (Vipaksa). On editions.
the other side, he argues with the affirmative statements that there are This is not all. As the Mahabharata itself testifies, one could start to
many Gitas strewn in the vast epic (Sapaksa). They are perfectly in read the same, beginning with the Anukramanika or the preface, or
unison with the Bhagavad Gita. They together echo the message of else with the Astika Parva and so on.
the Bhagavad Gita only. That shows that the Mahabharata itself does not approve of any
One does not speak in vacuum. There must be purbapaksha or rigid text where no word or sloka or syllable could be displaced.
an earlier speech to any speech whatever. And surely Mm. Thakur’s Everybody will agree that the preface of a work is always written
observation is a response to the opinions of those critics who posit after the work is composed & still it precedes the text. And the
that the Bhagavad Gita is not an organic part of the Mahabharata. The Mahabharata also observes that its anukramanika has been written
latter feel that the Bhagavad Gita is but an instance of interpolation in after the text was composed & yet the text could begin with the
the vast epic. anukramanika itself.
Mm. Thakur however disagrees with such a view and feels that the Thus it is evident from the admission of the text itself that the text is
Bhagavad Gita is part & parcel of the vast epic Mahabharata. This is not an organic whole. One could read the text beginning from anywhere.
not all. The whole of the Mahabharata as Mm. Thakur opines is instinct Besides, any part of the text could be abridged or omitted.
with the message of the Bhagavad Gita. Consequently any extract from the text could be read independent
This is the pratijna or the premise for our present study. We propose of the text as well. and the people read the Srimad Bhagavad Gita an
hereby to check the truth of ths same. extract from the Mahabharata as a complete work in itself and a unique
When Mm. Thakur asserts that the Srimad Bhagavad Gita is the work of art.
part & parcel of the Mahabharata, he does not mean thereby that the The Pratijna, however, seeks to posit that despite allowing the text
Introduction 13 14 ... A Study of the GITAS in the Mahabharata
every kind of flexibility as to its structure & meaning, one must admit 14. Vamadeva Gita (12/92-4) VA.G
that any part & every part of the text has a homogeneity as to its Each gita is a kind of samvada, Samvada is often a conversation
meaning and that is easily perceptible once we compare the gitas strewn between two or more participants. But it might be a pure narrative as
in the text. well. For example the tenth chapter of the Anu gita is entitled Parasuram
Here we must pause a while to describe what a gita is. The Srimad Arjuna Samvad. It dewlls on how the legendary hero Kartaviryarjuna
Bhagavad Gita is popularly known as the gita. But besides the Srimad tormented the ocean only to learn who could be a match for him in
Bhagavad Gita, there are many other Gitas, widely known & read in prowess. Once again there is the Alarka Sambad in the same Anu gita
India. They do not always belong to the Mahabharata alone. The which dramatises a conversation between Alarka and his senses.
Gorakhpur press has published the Gajendra Gita which is an excerpt The gitas are also, a kind of sambad. Every Chapter of the Srimad
from the Bhagavata Purana. Besides there is Uddhava Gita. It is also Bhagavad Gita ends with Iti Srikrisnarjuna sambade...etc. Srimad
an extract from the Bhagavata. Then there is the Devi Gita, an extract Bhagavad Gita has set a convention and the Gita is a unique genre in
from the Devi Bhagavata. Upendranath Mukhopadhyaya of Basumati its own right. Genre implies a convention that communicates to the
Sahitaymandir published an anthology of twenty-five such gitas, as reader what is expected from it. We never go to a post office for
early as during the first half of the 20th Century. But that collection is prayer. We never go to a church to post a letter. This is because
no longer extant in the market. Of late, Chittaranjan Ghosal has edited genres in architecture are well defined. Similarly genres in literature
a volume consisting of thirty five gitas in all culled from different Puranas are often well defined. The reader can go to a novel or a lyric, according
and the Mahabharata as well. to what he seeks. Let us now see into the genre called gita & learn
The gitas belonging to the Mahabharata that Mm. Thakur has what we could expect from it.
referred to besides the Srimad Bhagavad Gita are As we have already pointed out, the gita is often a conversation
1. Vritra Gita (12/279-80) V.G between two persons, sometimes it is a conversation among six persons
2. Harita Gita (12/278) H.G as in Sadja Gita. There Vidura and the five brothers—the Pandavas
3. Bodhya Gita (12/178) BO.G participate in a discourse. In other instances it is commonly, a discourse
4. Manky Gita (12/177) M.G between two persons. The Vritra gita is a discourse between the demon
5. Sadja Gita (12/167) S.G Vritra and Sanat Kumar—the child of Brahma, the Creator. The
6. Vichakhnyu Gita (12/265) VI.G Parasara Gita has been addressed by Parasara, the saint par-excellence
7. Sampaka Gita (12/176) S.G who happens to be the father of the very narrator of the Mahabharata.
8. Parasara Gita (12/290-8) P.G The addressee here is the sage king Janaka. The Hamsa Gita is a
9. Anu Gita (14/16-9) A. G conversation between the Creator in the shape of a Swan and a host
10. Brahmana Gita (14/29-34) Br.G of gods known as Sadhyas.
11. Rishabha Gita (12/125-8) R.G Thus the two persons participating in the gita need not be men
12. Hamsa Gita (13/299) H.G always. There might be a demon participating in it. There might be a
13. Utathya Gita (12/90-1) U.G swan as well. The latter adds to the gita a flavour of the fable.
The two persons could be the personas of someone’s mind & high esteem. The other, fully satisfied with the former’s devotion to
intellect as well. The Brahman gita a sub-set of the Anu gita is a him and eagerness to know, either answers to the query on his own or
conversation between a Brahmin & his wife. The Brahman is the quotes someone’s speech on likely issue, spoken earlier.
persona of one’s intellect and the wife is the persona of one’s mind. For example Arjuna bewildered and at his wits’ end knowing not
Thus even abstract ideas participate in the conversation of the gita what to do at the battleground submits himself at the feet of Krishna &
reminding us of the Morality Dramas in vogue during the Middle Age says—
Europe. I am your disciple. Teach me.
But the gita is not always a conversation between two persons. It Siddha, the teacher, in the Anu gita tells Kasyapa that he is
could be a dramatic monologue as in the case of Manky gita. Manky satisfied with the devotion of his disciple.
a poor man fails in his economic pursuits and takes to renunciation. The teacher must be satisfied with the disciple.
He speaks to himself about his philosophy of life. A listener could be I am happy with thee, oh you learned
present there; or may be there is none. Tell me what I can do for you.
A gita could be a decree or a sermon as in the case of Vichakhnyu You are quite deserving for what you want.
gita where the king Vichakhnyu at the sight of cows slaughtered decrees And the right time is come. (A.G.-I, 42)
that no animal be slaughtered at the altar of sacrifice. Yes, utterance at the right time is one of the important features of
Most of these gitas have been quoted by the protagonists of the the gita.
Mahabharata in response to the queries of another. Thus Bhisma quotes Srikrishna had earlier told the gita to Arjuna at the battle ground of
the Vritra gita in response to the queries of Yudhisthira, when the great Kurukshetra. The Kurukshetra battle over, Arjuna once again asked
battle at Kurukshetra was over. The same Bhisma quotes the Bodhya Krishna to repeat the contents of the gita once again.
gita, and Vichakhnyu gita or the Hamsa gita on different occasions. But Krishna says that he is now helpless. Because, the situation
The listener is Yudhisthira. But the Sadja gita dwells on the deliberations that impelled Krishna to utter the gita at the battle-field is no longer
among the Pandavas and Vidura, their uncle, regarding the importance present. When he told the gita to Arjuna, he points out that he was
of the different necessities of life in dharma artha kama & moksha. yogayukta or under the spell of ecstasy. He chides Arjuna for not
Srimad Bhagavad Gita is however, directly addressed to Arjuna. remembering what Krishna told him earlier at the battle field.
Krishna is the speaker. The same gita has been however quoted by Thus, the gita has always been uttered in a fit of ecstasy. When the
Sanjaya to keep Dhritarastra informed of the developments at speaker is beyond himself. The utterance takes place as it were for
Kurukshetra where the belligerent Kauravas & Pandavas assembled the first time and it is unique. Since one cannot say the gita. Whenever
for a fight to the finish. Thus the gita is either a conversation among one wills, could we argue that speech reveals itself through its speakers
people or else it is a speech quoted by one person in course of whenever it wills.
conversation with another. Any conversation implies two persons. One The gita like all speech has three components in the encoder/speaker,
of them is eager to know something on an issue of crucial importance the decoder/listener and the speech or the gita itself.
to him. He puts forward his query before the other, whom he takes in It has been already pointed out, the speakers and the listeners of
the gita are no ordinary men and women. Yudhisthira, in quest of Or to one who despises me. (BH.G-XVIII, 67)
knowledge tells Bhisma at the outset of the Vritra Gita. This puts in one’s minds the reader’s aesthetics. To decode the
Oh Grandfather ! Though we belong to men we are born of gods, still we text, it needs a competent reader. While the modern critics like Riffaterre
suffer from worldly sorrows. (VG -1, 2) demand of the reader certain critical faculties and certain faculties of
Yudhisthira is a man born of the seed of Yama, the deity that imagination necessary to decode a text, the Bhagavad Gita, asks
controls the world. The addressee, Grandfather Bhisma is also born something more from the reader. (i) He should be adept in penance.
of a mortal father & the goddess of the river Ganges. It is the grandfather (ii) He should have reverence. (iii) He must not despise the speaker or
who quotes the Vritra Gita where Vritra, a demon puts forward his author. (iv) He must be willing to read or hear. But, be that as it may,
queries and Sanat Kumar, the direct descendant of the Creator Brahma, Krishna spoke to Arjuna at the battleground of Kurukshetra in the
is the teacher. The frame of these gitas are chiefly conversation between open space so that quite a few of the warriors could hear him besides
Yudhisthira and Bhisma or between Arjuna & Krishna. In Srimad Arjuna. Hence the gitas are not necessarily the secret lore to be
Bhagavad Gita Krishna himself speaks the gita. In the Sadja gita imparted to a select few. By Vedavyasa’s own admission it must be
Yudhisthira and his four brothers and Bidura who is also born of Yama accepted that the Mahabharata & the Puranas, have been composed
participate in a discourse. In other gitas, there are more than one only to be imparted among the masses, irrespective of caste or creed
order of addressor & addressee. For example in the Vritra gita, the or sex. And yet the Mahabharata itself argues that no one can fully
first order of addressor and addressee are Yudhisthira and Bhisma. At decode it.
the instance of Yudhisthira Bhisma quotes the conversation between Why so? It has been said that Vedavyasa the composer, at the
the fallen demon and Sanat Kumar and Sukracharya the teacher of instance of Brahma the creator invoked Lord Ganesha to take down
the demons. That is the second order of addressor & addressee. As the narrative. Lord Ganesha agreed to act as a stenographer of
in Anugita, there could be a third order of addressor & addressee & Vedavyasa. But if Vedavyasa faltered to dictate continuously Lord
so on. Ganesha would give up the assignment. Well, Vedayasa agreed to the
As we have already referred to the Siddha’s spech in the Anu gita, terms of Lord Ganesha on condition that the latter must not write a
it is evident that any Tom Dick & Harry cannot be the listener of such single verse without understanding its import. Consequently, whenever
gitas. In the Srimad Bhagavad Gita also Krishna observes Vedavyasa had to stop a while in course of his dictation, he would
I tell you the most secret thing. introduce a riddle known as Vyasa-Kuta in the course of his narration.
You are dear to me. And the Lord had to pause a while to decode the same. In this way it
Hence I tell you for your well-being
is said that there are some 8200 verses scattered through-out the
Sarvaguhyatamam bhuyah srinu me paramam vacah
narrative, that baffle the readers. If 8200 verses scattered all about
Istosi me dridamiti tato vakshyami te hitam. (B.G- XVIII, 64)
the narrative are ambiguous, the whole of the narrative becomes
Krishna warns Arjuna
ambiguous. It is claimed that Vyasa, Ganesha and Sukdeva only three
Never impart it to a man sans penance
or sans devotion persons know the real import of those verses. Consequently by
Don’t tell it to one who does not want to hear admission of the Mahabharata itself the whole narrative is ambiguous.
Since, the Mahabharata could be read beginning from anywhere with But Shakespeare has written tragedies that are time and again.
Anukramunika or Astiks Parva as the opening, the structure of the Hence, there are no universal rules to judge a work of art. In fact
Mahabharata and the meaning of the same is open-ended. If what every work of art is unique and it is a manifesto of what a work of art
seems to be the third chapter of a novel is read as the first chapter the should be. Every work of art has in it the hidden rules of aesthetics
import of the story changes. with which we could judge it.
In other words, ambiguity is inherent in the very structure and Any work of art known as literature is language at bottom. Curiously
language of the Mahabharata. The gitas under survey, as they stand enough the Brahmana gita, a subset of the Anu gita puts forward a
are extracts from the self-same text and hence they are ambiguous theory of language which sees eye to eye with the views of modern
also. linguisties.
Krishna himself acknowledges the ambiguity in his speech when Since we can not think without language modern linguisties points
he says, that people look upon the soul as marvellous, some others out that language comes first & ideas next. Language, as such, however
speak of it as marvellous ; some others hear of it as marvellous. No has no meaning. Language is a collection of some shared signs. We
wonder that they donot understand it even after hearing about it. who speak English know what we mean by the word ‘chair’. We
Ascaryavad pasyati Kascidetam agree among ourselves to call a kind of seat as chair. The word chair
Ascaryavad vadati tathaiva canyah is therefore a sign which has two sides in a set of phonemes or signifier
Ascarya vaccainamanyah srnoti
Srutvapyenam veda na caiva. kascit (B.G- II, 29)
and a referent or a signified. A word is therefore But the
The same could apply to describe the whole of the Mahabharata
as well as to all the gitas. signifier and signified are not organically connected. Another language
And of course, Empson observes that ambiguity is sine qua non or another culture might call kedara what we mean by chair. Once
with all true poetry. Indian aesthetics also values laksmana as one of again, a signifier or a set of phonemes which was once employed to
the characteristic features of poetry. Kuntaka in his Vakrokti Jivita mean one thing earlier might mean something else at a later point of
observes that elliptical speech is the life of poetry. This clearly suggests time. The Sanskrit word duhita.. used to mean the daughter of a
that a speech may have more than one level of meaning in vacyartha household who milks the cow. Right now duhita. means simply a
or literal meaning and laksmanartha or suggested meaning. daughter of a household. She may shudder at the sight of a cow.
But one wonders, if a sentence has meanings on more than one Since language comes first & ideas next, the Post—moderns posit
level, has it any meaning at all? that this is a world made up of language. Since language as such has
There is no point in judging a work of art from some a priori notions no inherent meaning in it, the world that is built with language is also
of what a work of art should be like. Aristotlean poetics with which without meaning. It is a virtual world—an illusion and everyone is at
we could judge Sophocles fail to grasp the excellence of liberty to make sense of it in his or her own way.
Shakespearean drama. The aesthetic standard which we apply to judge The Brahmana gita also observes that language is prior to mind &
Shakespeare is of no avail when we appreciate the dramas of Kalidasa. ideas. This is evident from the query of the Brahmani—
Indian poetics banishes every kind of tragedy from the realm of drama. Kasmad vagabhavat purvam
Kasmad pascanmanobhavat In the face of these facts about language how could we decode the
Manasa cintitam vakyam text of the gitas? How could we get at their meaning?
Yada Samabhipadyate. ( Br. G.- II, 10 )
Since, meaning is not inherent in a language, it is a culture that
How is it that speech came fist & mind later? We know that we makes sense of it. Putting vermillion on the parting of the hair is a
think out our speech with the help of our mind. language with women of Bengal. Other Bengali women might infer
Lacan, the modern psychologist par excellence posits that our from it that a woman is married. But a Latin American woman, finding
minds are forged with our speech only. a Bengalee woman putting on vermilion on the parting of the hair might
The Brahmana gita however goes further in its philosophy of deem it to be a nice decoration. Thus a language becomes meaningful
language. It observes that there are two types of speech. One is through one’s culture.
apparently determined by the mind. But this can only describe the The present reader has a culture of his own time. No doubt it has
contingent and the sense perceptions. The supra-real or the supra- the traces of the past when the hymns of the Vedas & the songs of the
sensual is only grasped by language, of which mind does not know Mahabharata burst forth. But at the same time it is mingled with the
anything. culture that is capitalism & computer. Of course one must read the
Sthavaram jangamam caiva vindhyuthe manasi mama gitas, from the cultural stand-point of one’s own time. At the same
Sthavaram matsakase vai jangamam visaye tava
time one must try to read them in the context of the culture & shared
Yastum tam visayam gachhenmantro varnah svaropi va
tanmano jangamo nama tasmadapi gariasi ( Br. G.-II, 16,17 ) language of the time of the Mahabharata.
The cosmic mind or Brahma avows that both the static and the Since no absolute meaning of any text is possible we propose
dynamic are its mind. But whatever is static or perceivable through hereby to read each one of the gitas as unique and complete in itself,
senses is within the grasp of human mind. Whatever is dynamic as from close reading stand-point. Close-reading & explicatio de texte
suprasensual is grasped by language alone. are very much akin to each other. Mallinatha or Sayana revelled in
In other words language creates the suprasensual world. And the their respective exigesis of Kalidasa or the Vedas almost in a likely
gitas are a language where the sensual & the supra sensual mingle. It is manner. Since poetry or any narrative moves in time as opposed to
not a language that describes the contingent and the fragmentary only. painting that manifests in space we will proceed reading the text bit by
It creates a world where senses falter. bit and explicate the same in its literal sense as well as in its suggestions
Any presence always reminds of its absence. And abhava is one or laksmana. To explore the laksmana we could employ different
of the substances according to Nyaya-vaisesika. Speech accordingly devices such as grammatical & linguistic, psychological & sociological.
reminds of silence. The Brahmana gita however speaks of speech as The grammatical device of interpreting language is perfectly in harmony
of two types in speech & silence. with the ancient Sanskrit tradition. For example. The Devi gita of the
Devi Bhagavata posits :
Ghosini jatanirghosa nityameva pravartate
Tayorapi ghosinya nirghosameva gariyasi (Br. G- II, 21) Svaprakasanca caitanyam na parena prakasitam
Anavastha dosasattvaya svenapi prakasitam
And one wonders whether these gitas lead one from speech to Karmakartrivirodhah syat tasmattaddipavat svayam (II, 12, 13)
that indeterminate realm of silence where silence is eloquent?
Consciousness is self-effulgent. It is not manifest by any one else. Sabda or verbal authority has been largely neglected in western
Or else there would be the fallacy of anavastha. Again, one cannot philosophy. But the close reading school especially and the schools
say that consciousness expresses itself. Because in that case there based on linguistics generally look upon language as its own referent.
would be the conflict between subject & object. Poetry in general & the gitas under study fall within the scope of Sabda
Again, the same Devi Bhagavata employs linguistic device and goes pramana. Nyaya admits of upamana or comparison as a source of
beyond the literal meaning. knowledge. Often in poetry we compare the perceptible with that the
Padarthavagatih purvam vakyarthavagatihstatah perception of which is not verifiable—in other words not perceptible.
Tatpadasya ca vacyartha gireham parikirtitah Although in the 1930s the Vienna circle posited verifiability as the sole
Tvam padasya ca vacyartho jeeva eva na samsayah criteria for truth, can we verify everything one perceives? Dona saw a
Ubhayorai –kyamasina padena procyate vudhaih (IV,20,21)
dream. Can we verify its truth? Yet did not Dona dream?
The word tat signifies the consciousness. The speaker here identifies When the Brahmana Gita said that language can comprehend or
herself with the consciousness pure & boundless. The work ‘tvam’ on create the suprasensual, we must take such language as sabda
the other hand signifies a limited being. The two cannot be the same. pramana. By way of studying the upamana and by way of inference
And yet the verb meaning the be verb in the form of “are” identifies we will seek hereby to explore the meaning of each gita. on as many
the two. The identification as the speaker of the Devigita herself says levels as possible.
is never possible on the plane of literal meaning. One must take to Finally we will take into account the recurrent imagery, or phrases
laksana to decode the same. or single words even, that are significant in all the gitas including the
Truth as Srimad Bhagavad Gita itself observes could be at least on Srimad Bhagavad Gita. They will include such motifs like, Prakriti,
three planes. adhibhautivika, adhidaivika and adhyatmika. The Purusa, Jivatman, paramatman, manas, ahamkara, buddhi,
adhibhautika meaning could be the literal meaning itself. The pancabhuta, five senses, human body, knowledge, transmigration of
adhidaivika and adhyatmika sense of the speech must be inferred. soul, karmaphala & so on.
Well inference must have two criteria in perception as well as regular We will try to understand these notions in the context of the gitas
concommitance or pervasion, Gautama points out that while the as well as in the context of modern science & philosophy, sociology
concomitance is natural and lawful in verbal authority, judgements or etc. as well.
the concommitance is based on man-made conventions. Yes, literature Much of the language of the gitas speaks of the imperceptible or
creates a world of its own, and it must be judged by the criteria set by the unverifiable. It is not ordinary language. It goes beyond the grasp
itself. Vatsyayana argues that in inference the concomittance in question of our mind & catches the glimpse of the suprasensual. This is perhaps
is between two things both of which can be observed. But verbal the province of poetry as distinguished from that of prose. Prose dwells
authority may well relate a word with a type of object never perceived on what we can perceive with senses. Poetry looks beyond. Hence it
or even perceptible. Jayanta further posits that authority operates lies in the logic of affairs to read the gitas as poetry. The recurrent
through single world alone while inference requires well made imagery that do not belong to any truth discourse need be also decoded
propositions for its operation. in the aesthetic light. It logically follows thereby that we can reach our
Introduction 25 ... A Study of the GITAS in the Mahabharata
conclusions as to philosophy & poetry, & religion & poetry, which CHAPTER - II
will form separate chapters.
Looking into the gitas from all these diverse angles, cannot however
distract us from our premise which was to check the pratijna of this VRITRA-GITA
treatise. On the other hand, constant reference to the Srimad Bhagavad The very name Vritra gita charges us with awe & curiosity. Vritra is
Gita and searching for variations & identities among the gitas will known to us, the Indian readers, as a great demon who overwhelmed
indicate how far the message of the Bhagavad Gita is reflected on the Indra the Lord of the heavens. He put the whole existence out-of-
other gitas. joints. It was he who had pent up the rivers in caves. It was he who
Let us now have a quick look at the gitas. had driven all the cows away into the caverns unknown and shut them
up. The Vedas themselves dewll on his might. Indra the Lord of the
gods however vanquished the king of the demons and rescued the
cosmos. The story is widely known among the Indians. It puts in our
mind the grand story of the fall of Satan and his comrades after a
terrible fight with God the Father in Christian mythology. The devil is
to be despised. The devil that lives in us must be chained and baulked.
How is it that the name of the prince of devils is associated with a gita?
The name Vritra gita is not an accidental super-scription on the text.
Because the text itself says :
Asminnarthe pura gitam
Srnusvaikamana nrpah
yatha daityena vrtrena
bhrastaisvaryena cestitam.
The title of the text under study has its clue in the text only.
One might ask–why does the association of the word gita with the
name of a devil spring surprise? The answer is not far to seek. The
gita is a name universally known amongst us the Indians, as a shortening
of the name Shrimad-Bhagavad Gita. Shrimad Bhagavad Gita is known
as the Gita in short. The word gita might mean a song. The Gita with
capital ‘G’ is however Krishna’s speech at the battleground of
Kurukshetra. Krishna is the almighty in mortal frame. The addressee
of his speech was Arjuna. Arjuna is the counterpart of Achilles in the
Indian epic the Mahabharata. The speech of Krishna to Arjuna, in
course of their conversation, on the crucial occasion of a world war,
Vritra-Gita 27 28 ... A Study of the GITAS in the Mahabharata
compasses heaven and beyond and unties the riddles of existence. It blessed with super-human faculties still why should they suffer from
is an ecstatic piece of poetry cs Aarlyle says in his Hero as a poet, all sorrows that are wont to overwhelm the ordinary mortals. Yudhisthira
great poetry is at bottom a song. Hence the name Shrimad Bhagavad is keen to give up the kingdom for a life of a recluse so that there could
Gita. It is a song withal. But could a demon give a tongue to a likely be no rebirth for him. Perhaps he asks for the consent of his grandfather
song? This query impels us to go through the text. We want to know to this end.
what elevated words could flow from the lips of a mighty demon like Yudhisthira’s speech foregrounds paradoxes. Firstly he says that
Vritra. there is no joy in victory in battles. Secondly even super-human
The Vritra gita opens with the speech of Yudhisthira. personages suffer sorrows to which ordinary men are subject.
hanya dhanya iti janah In response, the Grandfather Bhisma, utters another paradox.
sarvesman pravadantyata Neither sorrow is boundless
na duhkhitatarah kascit nor anything is countless
pumanasmabhirasti ha Death & rebirth too not for ever
lokasambhavitairduhkham Nothing is fixed for eternity here.
yatpraptam purusottama nantanantam maharaja
praphya jatim manusyesu sarvam sankhyangocarah
devairapi pitamahah. purnabhavopi vikhyato
The speech is addressed to Bhisma, the grandsire of the Kurus nasti kincidihacalam.
and the Pandavas who revelled in the mighty battle of Kurukshetra, Does it not necessarily mean that nothing is infinite here? Is not the
Yudhisthira the eldest brother of the Pandavas has come to his great- infinite itself finite? Sarvam sarikhyanagocarah.
grandfather Bhisma. But no joy of victory lights up his speech. He Yudhisthira has already expressed his intention to give up all his
frankly tells his grandfather that despite the fact that people everywhere possessions, so that he could escape the eternal cycle of birth, death
greet them, Yudhisthira & his brothers do not find any happiness in & rebirth. Bhisma however points our that posessions are no hindrance
having killed and vanquished the enemy forces in the mighty battle that on the path of liberation from either sorrow or birth–death & rebirth
took place presently before. This is mightily disconcerting to Yudhisthira cycle. Of course the owner of the body, (body being one’s possession)
himself only when he reflects on the fact that he and his four brothers has to expiate the fruits of virtue & vice. Darkness resulting from the
were all demi-gods, divine in origin. They are the counterparts of the same overwhelms him (the owner of the body). When the owner of
heroes of Greek mythology, such as Achilles, Perseus, Hercules, the body or the self lights the lamp of knowledge through his own
Theseus and the like. The addresee grandfather Bhisma is also born endeavour, the darkness disappears and the Brahman or the Infinite is
of the divine. He was the son of king Santanu and the goddess of the revealed at heart (sl. 11). The very word Brahman needs explication.
river Ganges. Achilles too was the son of a river. Infact, the Brahman is that which is infinitely big and which is ever expanding.
Mahabharata, the great treasure of ancient Indian myths is peopled Thus Brahman is a paradoxical concept of nothing-is-infinite or
with such demi-gods, both in the roles of protagonists and antagonists. Nothing. Further more it is said that Brahman makes everything
Consequently Yudhisthira asks that although he and his brothers are whatever infinitely big. Bhisma observes that this Brahman could be
perceived only when darkness disappears at the instance of the light the action directly like a playwright par-excellence. There are Vritra
of knowledge. This involves further problems. If it is perceivable only uvaca and Ushana uvaca and so on. V. gita is by the by a part of the
in the light, the light of knowledge is some-thing else than Brahman. grand epic named the Mahabharata. The first narrator of the epic is
So is darkness. So is the perceiver. The perception of Brahman does Sauti. Sauti shows the action instead of narrating. Hence there are
not take place without. It takes place at heart. Thus the source of Bhisma uvaca and Yudhisthira uvaca. Bhisma in turn, shows the action
knowledge here is perhaps intuition. instead of narrating. Thus there is a narrative within another narrative
Bhisma, further adds that mere activity of any kind, however much & so on. When we open a gate and enter into the courtyard and find
meticulously pursued, can never ever lead one to the realisation of the another gate that opens into another courtyard,–in short when we
infinitude called the Brahman. Here Bhisma clearly distinguishes encounter the second courtyard, the first courtyard becomes real.
knowledge as an activity from other activities. In other words, he When, we dream in a dream, the earlier dream must have been real or
posits that rituals in themselves are not enough to know Brahman. else, how could there be dreaming in a dream? This narrative technique
What one has to do is to worship liberated beings or the jeevanmukta. of the Mahabharata is surely time and again.
This might remind one of the sociologist Comte. He replaced the Bhisma describes the context of Vritra’s speech
gods with great men in his proposal for the cult of humanism. This asminnarthe pura gitam srinusvaikamana nrpa
might remind one of Krishna’s speech in the XIIth chapter of the Gita yatha daityena vrtrena bhrastaisvaryena cestitam
where he posits that it is clever to worship him viz Krishna only instead nirjitena sahayena hrtarajyena bharata
asocata satrumadhye buddhimasthaya kevblam
of pursuing the Brahman. Krishna was the Brahman or the infinitude
bhrastaisvaryam pura vrtram usana vakyamavravit
incarnate in human form. Of course, Krishna says that he possesses kacit parajitasyadya na vyatha testi danava.
the infinite where he lays his seed mama yoni mahadbrahma aham Utterly vanquished in the war with gods, Vritra was shorn of all his
biyayrodah pita. But above all this statement of Bhisma, involves possessions. And yet he looked calm. This aroused curiosity in
another question. Is liberation in the body at all possible? With Bhisma Sukracaryya, the mighty teacher of the demons and he asked Vritra—
it is possible. He speaks of the risis A Risi ( derived from root r to what makes you so calm & peaceful, despite the fact that you have
see) is a visionary. And there are bands of visionaries who should be lost your all. Vritra spoke in this context.
worshipped and imitated. Of course, since Brahman makes everyone Thus the context of Vritra offers a contrast to the context in which
grow infinitely those who know Brahman are, themselves Brahman in Yudhisthira speaks to Bhisma. Yudhisthira has won the battle and yet
human shape. he lacks composure. Vritra has lost the battle and yet he is cool. While
The phrase maharsi-samghan echoes the phrase in maharsi- Yudhisthira begins the conversation with Bhisma, Vritra speaks only
siddhasavighah canto in XI of the Bhagavad Gita. in response to the great teacher Shukracaryya’s query
In this context Bhisma, cites the conversation between Vritra the Now what does Vritra say in reply to his teachers querie’s. He
prince of the demons, and Sukracharyya the great teacher of the frankly tells his teacher, that a demon though, he has already seen into
demons. the truth of coming and going of the different elements of the existence.
Bhisma is here the narrator. But instead of narrating, he shows us This he has achieved through tapas (The word ‘tapas’ means heat.) It
is through the accumulation of energy or heat that he has attained It also reminds of the cosmic vision that Arjuna experienced in the
suprasensual perception. And thereby he sees into the truth of the XIth canto of the Bh. Gita Just as Bhisma said that to know Brahman
world. And since the mystery of appearance & disappearance is one had better worship maharsi sangha or the sages similarly instead
unravelled before him, he says that he does not joy over victory & of replying to the queries of Vritra in terms of abstract arguments,
does not sorrow in defeat. Shukracarya seems to focus on the Being that has conquered death,
Why? Vritra points out that he had conquered the three worlds on to dwell on what acts and what hopes could make one like that-the
his own through penance. In other words, he feels that he had acquired Eternal Being.
merit and thereby he conquered the three worlds. And he did it for his But dramatically enough just at the moment when Sukracharyya is
own pleasure. Now that he has lost all his possessions, he must not about to begin his discourse, Sanat Kumar turns up. He is the son of
blame his stars for that. He admits that his fall is very much due to his Brahma, the creator. He is a great saint. When Sanat Kumar is seated,
own actions. In other words, if he congratulates himself for his erstwhile Shukracharyya asks him to deliberate on the greatness of Visnu. Visnu
conquests, he also shoulders the responsibility of his failure as well. could be described as one who is at the heart of all things great &
This observation is heroic indeed on the part of Vritra. But he further small, and who is vast at the same time.
observes that through he has lost his possessions, he still retains some Sanat Kumar asserts that Visnu is the creator and the destroyer of
of his knowledge earned estwhile. And he is in his calm. the universe. How is that? What is the source of this knowledge?
Thus he knows, that one reaps the way one sows. We reap our Neither scriptures nor penance can lead one to such knowledge. The
actions in time. So Vritra feels that time is all-in-all. Still he wants to source of such knowledge is heart or intuition How could one attain
know more about the truth of actions and their consequences from such an intuition. Well, one must cleanse one’s mind of such emotions
Shukracarya. as love & hatred. To that end he must act physically & mentally. He
Vritra’s queries are precise and searching. They are (1) why do must do it intelligently. Cleansing of the mind can not be done over-
lives come into being (2) why are they drawn to varied activities (3) night. Because, we have been used to spouses & children through
what is the summum bonum, the attainment of which could make one different previous lives. Thereby our minds have been contaminated
immortal?(4) what kind of activity and knowledge bestow immortality with the three gunas or qualities in sattva rajas & tamas. We must
upon man? free our mind from their trammels. To that end we must persevere.
These are the questions that have been asked by man since time This poses a question. How come that man is drawn to certain things
immemorial. Vritra, a demon though, seems to give a tongue to the and despises certain other things?
queries of man through the ages. Thus the character of Vritra seems to Sanat Kumar does not answer this query directly. Instead he revels
have been humanised. in a cosmic imagery describing Visnu reminiscent of the Vedas and
In reply to Vritra’s queries Sukracharya begins his speech laden BH.G. Let us closely read the imagery.
with Vedic reminiscences. He speaks of the being whose prowees Lord Vishnu, is beginningless and endless.
overwhelms the earth and the skies. It reminds one of the Vedic hymn It is he who creates the static & the dynamic.
that speaks of the thousand-headed being, sahasirsah purusah. He exists in everything, destructible & indestructible.
This is how he drinks the universe through his eleven
types of manifestation. samsara. It is through the manifestation that there are thousand crores
His feet are the earth. oflives in this existence. Some are static. Some are dynamic among
His head towers above the skies.
them. They are in vast waters. Before one removes a drop of the
The skies are his ears.
The sun is his eyes. water, Visnu can, create a universe & destroy it.
The Moon is his mind. Thus Sanat Kumar speaks in terms of symbols. The myriad lives
His intellect is ever plunged in wisdom. seem to wallow in waters. The removal of the waters is absurd drop
His enjoyment is represented by the waters. by drop. The removal of illusion gradually through activity is next to
One is tempted to quote the relevant sukta in the Rg Vedas viz. absurd. Vritra earlier posited that Kala or Time is the god, through
Purusa sukta sloka by sloka in this context. which one reaps one’s actions. But Sanat Kumar here posits that
The Cosmic being is himself the world. And he is drinking in the Visnu is the lord of that Time itself. What seems ages to us might mean
world with his rays. To that end he has had eleven kinds of manifestation. a twinkling of an eye to Lord Visnu. Again what seems a twinkling of
In other words, whatever act, good or evil is being done is an eye might mean ages to Visnu. A whole universe could be created
performed by that Visnu. And whatever fruitious of such action are and destroyed in a nano-second by him. Hence individual efforts (Vritra
reaped are reaped by Lord Visnu alone. believes in individual efforts or tapas) are of no avail. One must get at
Those who know him, therefore do not take any responsibility of the heart of the world of phenomena, where there are differences.
performing any activity. They surrender the results of their activity to Now Sanat Kumar forges a typology of the creatures under the
Visnu. sun in terms of colours. There are black ones who rot in the hell, for
Sosramanam phalam tata hundred thousand times. And finally, these black ones are transformed
karmanastat phalam viduh. (II, 24) into smoke-coloured ones. In course of time they are under the impact
Action and inaction are the same. Inaction is as well that Visnu of sattvaguna. And their colour becomes red or blue. Gradually in
only. course of further births and deaths they turn into yellow ones. The
akarmanah phalam caiva process might be retrograde. The yellow ones might turn into red or
sa eva paramavyayah (II,24) black again. Then again they go higher up from black to red to yellow
He is the sacrifice. He is the priest of the sacrifice. till they attain white colour. Even those who have white colour might
One alone presides over all the differences. fall from bliss. They are born again & over again in different planes of
existence till they are wholly purged. Finally they are liberated at the
When living beings realise this the Brahman is revealed to him. hour when the universe dissolves. They may have a fall as well. Then
Thus Sanat Kumar, practically, takes an opposite stance in relation they are born as men. After numerous births and deaths, they attain
to Vritra’s stance. Vritra said that he was himself responsible for his the highest state of bliss. Sanat Kumar however, cannot categorically
failure. Sanat Kumar points out that on another plane of realisation, state on which plane, the highest state is possible. But this is possible
the issue of individual responsibility becomes a non-issue. only when the being or jiva reaps all his actions that he had performed,
The results of Visnu’s eleven types of manifestation is the world or through the myriads of births and deaths, pinning its faith on the
differences in the world of appearance. become victorious in war.

In reply to the discourse by Sanat Kumar Vritra says that he has The conversation between Yudhisthira & Bhisma is significant on
been purged of all his crudities. He now fully realises that the individuals another count. Bhisma also participated in the battle to which
have no personal responsibility. Lord Visnu is all in all. He runs the Yudhisthira refers. Bhisma belongs to the vanquished party in which
existence. Yudhisthira is victorious. Here the victor comes to the vanquished for
Bhisma says that Vritra, having said thus became one with the exhortation.
cosmic being paramatma and gave up his mortal raiments. And Bhisma the vanquished speaks to Yudhisthira without any
We must remember that Bhisma cited the Sanat Kumar Vritra malice. He is all love. He loves his enemies as much as he loves himself.
episode only to exhort the moaning Yudhisthira. The name Yudhisthira Furthermore, the state in which Bhisma speaks to Yudhisthira must
is ironical. Because it means one who is calm in war. But, Yudhisthira be remembered. He is now lying on a bed raised by arrows. He lies
is restless even when he comes out victorious in war. on the very points of the arrows and yet he is calm.
Yudhisthira, however still laments. He says that yellow and red Being defeated in the war, he is one with Vritra. But exhorting the
beings might often degenerate and could be born as subhuman species. truth about Visnu, he is one with Sanat Kumar. Thus he is two in one,
He wonders whether he would also degenerate like that Bhisma assures the teacher & the taught Vritra & Sanat Kumar of the conversation
him that such a possibility is almost nil. And here ends the conversation that he cites to exhort Yudhisthira.
between Bhisma and Yudhisthira. The conversation is strewn with various imagery viz. the imagery
Bhisma and Yudhisthira are the two chief protogonists in the epic of transmigration of soul, of the Karmaphala, of the many colours that
called the Mahabharata. The conversation between the two is just a individual self attains, of creation & destruction, of the world wallowing
mere fragment of the vast epic. But it seems to throw much light on the in magic water, of time, and above all of the towering stature of Visnu
characteristic features of these two characters. and his many names like Hari and Narayana and his many forms, of
Yudhisthira as the name suggests is one who keeps quiet even in Narayana (Nara-water ; ayana-abode) lying on the primal waters,
wars. But ironically enough he has lost all his calm despite the fact that of the earth and the skies and of the different planes of existence like
he has won a battle whereby he has defeated his mortal enemies once Satyaloka and Tapaloka etc. and of the three gunas and of the many
for all. And yet he is restless. This is because he feels responsible for types of manifestation of Visnu and of the imagery of the Sun. Unless
the mass-massacre enacted in the battle. Here he is one with Vritra we, decode each one, separately, we wonder, whether we can reach
who felt that he was responsible for his own failure. at the heart of this piece of poetry which baffles our understanding.
But Bhisma, by way of citing what Sanat Kumar told Vritra points This piece of poetry of the Mahabharata transports us indeed to a
out that Yudhisthira is not responsible for his doings. This does not world which baffles our reason and yet we feel that it is real. It is
calm Yudhisthira. He deems that he is not capable of the realisation different kind of poetry indeed.
that Vritra had after listening to Sanat Kumar. He wonders whether he How does it baffle our reason? One of the themes of this excerpt
will degenerate into sub-human species in life to come. This speaks of in the Mahabharata is good and evil. Reason always separates good
the great humility of his character. He is humble even when he has from evil. But how is it that the prince of demons, of course, a
Vritra-Gita 37 ... A Study of the GITAS in the Mahabharata
personification of evil, as distinguished from good who are signified CHAPTER - III
by gods, can achieve liberation through exhortation from Sanat Kumar?
How is it that he was blessed with exhortation from Sanat Kumar?
HARITA GITA
Was it not for the fact that he saw in a vision the white Visnu while
warring with Indra, the king of the gods? Since everything is Visnu, The Harita gita, once again, springs from the conversation between
there is nothing called good or evil. Why should then, the myriads of Bhisma and Yudhisthira.
selves wallow in the waters of ignorance? Are not all the lokas and kim silah kim samacarah kim vidya kim parayanah
hues but manifestations of the same Visnu. They are all illusory. Even prapnoti brahmanah sthanam yat param prakrterdhrubam. (1)
creation or destruction is illusory. Visnu alone is. Yudhisthira begins the conversation by putting forward the question.
We propose hereby to read the other gitas and see how these It is a repetition of the question posed by the same Yudhisthira
imageries recur in different contexts and grow into a meaning. earlier in the Vritra Gita.
kada vayam karisyamah samnyasam duhkhasanjakam
uhkhametat sariranam dharanam kurusattama
vimuktah saptabhirhetu—bhutaisca parncabhih
indriarthaih gunaiscaiva astabhisca pitamahah. ( V.G-I,3,4 )
The body itself seems to be the source of all misery to Yudhisthira.
The body, the 17 principles plus the 5 senses etectera seem to be the
trammels that baulk Yudhisthira.
Yudhisthira wanted earlier to get rid of them. In the frame of
reference of the Mahabharata, they are synonymous with Prakriti.
Prakriti is an elusive term as used in ancient Skt. literature. The three
gunas that have been referred to in the Vritra Gita are also associated
with Prakriti. According to the Samkhya system of philosophy
Prakriti is mindless as opposed to purusa. The purusa is all
consciousness. It is eternal, free, omniscient and pure
There are myriads of purusas who get manifest or distorted through
this body or the mindless prakriti. But Vritra gita speaks of one purusa
Visnu, instead of many purusas. Indeed if there were many purusas
who are free there is of course one purusa, who is all the purusas. Or
else the hypothesis as to the freedom of the purusa would have been
nullified. When the Vritra Gita posits that Visnu, drinks the world with
his rays through eleven kind of manifestations the world seems to be
Harita Gita 39 40 ... A Study of the GITAS in the Mahabharata
the nonself. But when we go further into the discourse of the Vritra Gets out of his home
gita it seems the Prakriti itself is but one of Visnu’s manifestations. and becomes indifferent to profit & loss
He is listless to the objects of pleasure
And ironically enough the very name Vritra implies thoughtless body.
And wanders aimlessly.
When Vritra asks questions, the body is surely the mind. And indeed
The phrase nirapeksah parivrajet speaks of a wide wanderer
according to the Samkhya, mind being one of 25 tattvas is very
who has no stay, no home, no hope, no aim in the world. He is
much the body.
dependant on nothing He is free.
This is in absolute contrast to what the West posits being impelled
He does not blame anyone with eyes, by words, or with mind. He
by the philosophy of Descartes. They look upon mind as completely
neither blames anything or anyone in front of the same, or in absence
different from body. According to Descartes while body has extension,
of the same.
mind has thought. Hence mind and body are two distinct substances.
He must not be jealous of anyone. He must move about in this
God a third substance, sees to that they co-ordinate. Here also as per
wide world as a friend to everything.
Samkhya, Prakriti and Purusa are different. And Yudhisthira wants to
He prayeth best who loveth best.
get rid of the Prakriti. The very name Vritra however stands for the
All things both great and small.
--- mind— the body. In the Vritra gita the Body itself becomes one with
One must not make enemy of anyone, once getting life
the primordial consciousness. Does it not necessarily mean that all
He must not wander in the villages. He must live on alms. He speaks
body is at bottom that Visnu who is neither mind nor body. And every
lovingly to even one who speaks unpolitely to him. He must not go
body, as soon as it is aware of the One lurking in everything becomes
abegging as long as smoke rises from the hearth. He must have that
one with the One. So when, Yudhisthira asked in the V. G. how to get
much food only which is a must for keeping alive. He must not look
rid of the trammels of flesh, Bhisma seems to allegorically posit that all
forward to any kind of gains or honour. He lives in a desolate place
flesh is at bottom the one Visnu. And the realisation of the same could
like a cave or else he lives in a forest. He will look upon requests &
liberate one from the bondage.
refusals with equanimity. He will neither embrace holy deeds, nor
Be that at it may, Yudhisthira seems not to have fully realised what
perform unholy deeds. He is used to perceive the transitoriness of life
Bhisma had said in the Vritra gita. Hence the same question recurs
& world. He is not carried off by emotions or physical needs. Hence,
again.
madhyastha eva tistheta prasamsa nindaya sama ( 18 )
Bhisma is as patient as ever, ready to teach the inquisitive. Hence
he once again alludes to another conversation which he entitles as the The middle road or madhyamapantha does not mean avoiding
Harita gita. two extremes. It means looking upon opposites with equanimity. Here
Harita Gita is one with Buddhism.
Haritena pura gitam tam nivodha yudhisthira (3)
He is always in control of himself. He is alone. He has no home.
According to Harita
Svagrhadabhinihsrtya labhelabhe samo munih He is always plunged in awareness. He has no rapport with those
samupodhesu kamesu nirapeksah parivrajet ( 3 ) who are in worldly life or else who are in vanaprastha grhasthanam
One who has taken the vow of silence na samsrjyate kahrcit in vanaprastha.
Harita Gita 41 42 ... A Study of the GITAS in the Mahabharata
Indeed those who have the awareness can attain liberation. Or This is not all. As it has been already pointed out, the ideal man in
else it will be sheer hard work and nothing will come out of it. H. G. will have no rapport at all with the men of grhasthasrama &
The final legitimation of Harita is vanaprasthasrama.
abhayam sarvabhutebhyo dattva yah pravrajed grhat ( 22 ) We will seek answers to such questions as we proceed from one
Say—have no fear, to all the world and get out of the worldly life. gita to another. The gitas we are dwelling on at the moment all belong
Harita Gita is of course in harmony with the V. G. In the V. G. to the magnum opus called the Mahabharata. In a sense, in course of
Bhisma observed that one had better follow the life-style of the sages the vast interplay of characters welded into a complex web of actions,
But Vritra gita did not give any instance of the life-style, of a visionary. the explicit message of the Mahabharata might be inferred from the
Harita gita, therefore supplements Vritra gita. It give us a model of the gita where the speakers are in ecstasy and their speech is song. We
life-style of a jivan-mukta or a liberated fellow. Yudhisthira hungered want to read all these gitas one after another and see what message
for liberation. But he never asked what a liberated man would be like. they conveyed to their immediate listeners and what message they left
On the other hand. Arjuna asks Krishna in the BH.G. for all futurity.
Sthitaprayjnasya ka bhasa samadhisthasya kesava (II-54)

Krishna also repeatedly dwells on the model of an ideal man.
Actually man does not act from any abstract idea in his mind. He
must have a model engraved in his psyche If the ideal man of the
Harita could be impressed on the minds of men, the life and world
about us would be different. Thus the speaker of the Harita Gita is a
psychologist par excellence.
Of course, the Harita gita poses a few problems. For example,
some men of our time might ask whether the ideal man of the Harita
gita is ideal enough? Is he not an escapist?
Besides, as per the frame of reference in the the then India, chatur-
varna and the chatur-ashrama are archetypal. Lord Krishna—the
highest voice avows this.
And everyone should keep to his station and duties And of course
the four stages of life as depicted by Kalidasa
saisave abhyastavidyanam yauvane visayaisinam
vardhakye munivrttinam yogenanca tanutyajam. (Raguvansa)
is inallenably woven with the structure of caturvarnya
But Harita Gita is all for escape from the world.
possessions will be destryed. How is that? What ineffable wealth does

CHAPTER - IV
he possess? Well Janaka, the King of Mithila says
My wealth is boundless
BODHYA GITA And yet I am absolutely sans wealth.
The same Bhisma is the speaker of the Bodhya Gita. Although How could that be? Actually when a paradox is introduced
paradox informs, all the earlier Gitas, it is an astounding work of art intellectual discussions take off, transcending the mundane emotions.
opening with a paradox and foregrounding paradox all through, But Bhisma does not linger to decode the paradox of Janaka. On
characterised by allusion and esoteric brevity. the contrary he loads paradox upon paradox by way of citing what
What is a paradox? When we say alpavidya bhayankari or a Bodhya said to King Jajati.
little learning is dangerous, on the surface it makes no sense. In our King Jajati in quest of peace asked the sage Bodhya how to attain
frame of reference learning is good. If a lot of learning implies lot of peace. Jajati further asked—how is it that you are in perfect peace,
good, then a little learning is a little good. So such sayings as alpavidya listless of anything in the world.
bhayankari are pointless. But when we peruse the story of the four Bodhya replied reluctuantly
foolish brahmins we know that there is deeper wisdom in such sayings. I take advice from others.
Practically paradox has a long history in western aesthetics First But I seldom give it to anyone myself.
discussed in its formal elements in classical Greek rhetoric and in the Nevertheless since you are inquisitive.
Let me tell you with the aid of signs.
works of the stories, paradox became widely used in the Christian
I tell you,
mode of expression particularly in the works of Luther and Pascal. the prostitute, the vulture, the snake,
Schlegel called the paradox a basic form of poetry and linked it closely the blackbee, the maker of shafts
with poetry & irony. De Quincey feels that paradoxes are sine qua and a virgin are my teachers.
non with poetry since poetry reflects the paradoxical nature of the The speech of Bodhya itself is paradoxical. Because he readily
existence. And in the 20th century itself the Close-Reading School learns from others. But he is reluctant to teach others. And yet he
states that all great poetry is paradoxical. Because it communicates teaches & he teaches in a very suggestive way. Is it not the style of a
deeper truths that prose fails to comprehend and express. poet who abhors statement and revels in Vakrokti.
Our Bodhya Gita opens with the paradox—Atrapyundaharanti How is it that the saint par excellence could learn anything from a
gitam imamitihasam puratanam gitam videha-rajena janakena pingala ? How is it that he could learn from a snake or a black-bee?
prosamyata Anantamiva me vittam yasya me nasti kincana It reads like a riddle or a conundrum. Riddles & conundrums are
mithilayam pradiptayi na me dahyati kincana. part and parcel of all greet poetry and literature. The Sphinx poses
The speech of the king of Videha is a song according to Bhisma. riddles before Oedipus the King in Greek Literature.
Why? Because he speaks in ecstasy. In an ecstatic mood mundane Dharma poses riddles before Yudhisthira and his four brothers.
reasons are transcended and there is the paradox– Actually riddle is a form of paradox. Why should Kalidasa dare
If all the Mithila is put to fire, Janaka claims that nothing of his describe the lives of Raghus if he is really that fool mandah & feeble in
Bodhya Gita 45 46 ... A Study of the GITAS in the Mahabharata
physique & poor in speech. (tanu-vag-vibhavopi san) of others. Ask a Birla to live amidst all his wealth in the Moon, where
Bhisma nevertheless undertakes the task of decoding riddles & there is no man. Will he have anything to do with the untold wealth that
each one of his sayings is as chiselled as a saw which could be quoted he has? Besides once, some one possesses anything he does it so at
out of the context on any occasion as such and calls for explication. the cost of others. Hence everyone seeks to snatch it away from him.
Asha valavati rajan nairasyam paramane sukham asham Now a days possession does not necessarily have any use-value. Mr.
nirasham kritva tu sukham svapiti pingala. X buys a car not because it has any use-value. Because in a city like
While the mundane world is ever in favour of hoping against hope, Calcutta, where traffic-jams for hours together, is usual, possessing a
Tennyson’s Ulysses crying. car is not a help but hindrance. Still he possesses a car only for status,
To seek, to strive, to fight & never to yield. a hollow sham, which has no content and material use value. It has
Bhisma posits that despair is preferable to hope. And to that end exchange value only. I put on a platinum ring not for its use. I put it on
here is a microstory in the shape of an image. because its exchange value is out of reach of my neighbours. They will
The imagery is that of a desolate prostitute. When she is given up say–see how rich he is. Present day sociologists like Baudrillard
& expects no client, she has a peaceful sleep. observes that consumerism has robbed us of our leisure hours also. If
Dante’s inferno or hell has the inscreption written on its gateway Mr. X keeps his car in the garage only, people will say–see how miserly
Abandon ye all hope! he is! So, Mr. X must go with his family in the car for outing. How Mr.
Here Bhisma speaks of the reverse. Until & unless we abandon all X will pass his leisure is not at his disposal. The use of his leisure is
hopes,we cannot enter into the kingdom of bliss. also determined by the consumerism that has infected the whole social
What is hope for? To possess & possess only. But every possession body. The society of ours is indeed a diseased one. Bhisma, observes,
brings about misery in its trail. once we possess anything we are at the focus of our fellowmen, who
Hence Bhisma : are wont to cast their longing lingering jealous look on others. We are
Samisam kuraram dristva vadhyamanam niramishaih as it were the bird, with a piece of meat in our beaks drawing jealous
amishasya parityagat kurarah sukhamedhate. ( 9 ) attention at us of our neighbours. The popular belief is that one should
Kurara is a bird of prey. When it has a piece of meat in its beaks, have a home of one’s own. And that should mean that there will be a
all the other birds of prey surround him in defiant mood. Everyone specific place in time, where one could hide one’s head. But Bhisma
wants to snatch the piece of meat from the Kurara The Kurara is in opines the opposite of the same.
real trouble. But once the bird gives up the piece of meat, while other Griharambha hi duhkhaya na sukhaya kadachana
birds might fight among themselves for the prize, the bird can live in sarpah parakritam vesma pravishya sukhamedhate (10 )
peace and observe what ails the sorrow-stricken worldly life. To begin to found a house for one’s residence is singularly miserable.
It is a clear parallel of what happens in the worldly life. The capitalist The snake enters into the nest of another and enjoys itself. Actually
system as such is always keen on kindling fresh desires in our heart for one gita explicates what another gita leaves in suggestion.
possession of more & more material objects. Possession is never an The Harita Gita speaks of renouncing the home.
end in itself. We want to possess more only in relation to the possession abhayam sarvabhutebhyo yah pravrajet griham etc.
Bodhya Gita 47 48 ... A Study of the GITAS in the Mahabharata
Why should one renounce home? The Bodhya Gita says, It depends from which angle one looks upon a thing. The same snake
griharambho he duhkhaya has been debunked as the type of the ungrateful in
The word arambha is here significant.It implies initiative with some payah panam bhujanganam prokopaya na shantaye
purpose in sight. In other words it is associated with hope. But hope it And once again here in the B. G the snake is the type of the wise.
has been already held is a hindrance on the way to happiness. Besides, The snake might stand for many sublime ideas. For example it stands
when one wants to protect oneself from untoward possibilities one is for the life-force in man as typified by the Kulakundalini. Bhisma
pent up in it. One loses freedom thereby. Actually home could be further observes
read symbolically. It might mean some ideology even in which one Sukham juvanti munayo bhaikshyavrittim samashritah
might take refuge. But once one foregoes any dogma or fixation one is adrohenaiva bhutanam saranga iva pakshinah. ( 11 )
face to face with the reality–the Brahman. The truly happy man Just see, how happily do the munis live on alms. Just as the black-
foregoes his home to find home in eternity. Hence the recurrent longing bee lives among the feathered ones. They need not exploit others.
for a life in the woodlands in ancient Indian literature. When The word muni is itself very suggestive. Muni is one who keeps
Ramachandra was banished from Ayodhya he joyed over it, because silent. And it is the munis who live on alms because, thereby he exploits
he is fond of a life in the forest. Sita while childing longed for a life in no one. In the Harita Gita the role-model of a muni has been lauded.
the forest. The forest is the antithesis of the civilized world. While the But the Harita Gita has laid down the rules of begging, only when
civilized world is characterised by hierarchies the forest has none. smoke does not excelsior into the skies from its hearth.
While the civilized world is a limited one, limited by rules, the forest Vidhume myastamusale vyangare bhuktavarjane
has none. The forest stands for the uncharted world, wide and atita patra sanchare bhiksham lipsyeta vai munih. (H.G.. 9 )
wonderful and indeterminate. Indeed Shakespeare also speaks
In other words begging must not be a profession.
eloquently of a life in the forests when he sings.
But modern mind raises crucial questions on this issue. What are
Under the Greenwood tree
alms but a share in the surplus of wealth, produced by men who have
Who loves to lie with me
Come hither, come hither, come hither.
joined in the economic activity. If everyone went a--begging and no
Here shall he see no enemy. one were producing wealth through economic activity how could getting
But winter and rough weather. alms be possible. Earlier in the Harita Gita it has been legitimated that
And yet sometimes one needs shelter, a mortal as he is. In that Abhayam sarvabhutebhyo dattva yah pravrajet grihat.
case one had better imitate the snake. The snake always hides its one should straight away renounce the world. A number of Jataka
head in the nest built by others. In other words since the snake has no tales dwell on how all the citizens of kingdoms after kingdoms embraced
home, s/he makes home, wherever s/he finds one. The use of the renunciation. If renunciation becomes universal, will life for man be at
snake as a role-model might seem to be a repulsive one to modern all possible? One might invoke an answer to it from Shakespeare’s
taste. But in the foests there is no hierarchy. Besides, just as language Tempest. Here a wise courtier of Prospero, opines that if love were
is at bottom always ambigious, so, are the things of life and existence. universal man would not need to work. Because, nature in her bounty
Bodhya Gita 49 ... A Study of the GITAS in the Mahabharata
would give enough roots and fruits for man’s survival.

CHAPTER - V
Finally the grand sire Bhisma says
Bahunam kalaho nityam samkathanam dhruvam MANKI GITA
ekaki vicarisyami kumari samkhako yatha. (13 )
All the three gitas, that we have already read are rather
To live among many breeds quarrel. When two are together, they conversations. They remind one of the Socratic dialogues. In Socratic
must speak to each other. But Bodhya’s role model is a lonely virgin dialogues, however, Socrates himself puts forward the most searching
who wears only one bangle. questions and his motive was to bring round his addressee to his
The lonely virgin has been always the theme of traditional poetry. opinion. So Socratic dialogues are rather dramas of conversion. There
She is sad because of her loneliness. But here the lonely virgin is the the all conquering wit of Socrates glitters all about. Although Socrates
role model. And, of course, she is not sad.The lonely virgin has only himself seems to believe in souls and life after death, his dialogues are
one bangle on. If she had too many bangles that would clash with more directed towards how life on mundane plane could be made
each other and there would be a noise. If many men lived together blithe with truth, beauty and goodness, the three summum bonums as
there would be a noise. But the muni observes silence. Hence he per Greek ideal of life. These gitas are however conversations of
would move alone like a lonely virgin. different kind. Here, the teacher does not generally ask on his own.
Actually a lonely man is the strongest man under the sun. Because Somebody comes to the teacher on the other hand with sincere
he has no dependence. God is one who has no dependence. S/he is inquisitiveness and poses questions. The B.G. exhorted that the
like god. His or her aloneness is all oneness indeed. But what does the questioner should come to his teacher in all humility and heartfelt query.
imagery of virgin stand for? Jesus was born of virgin Mary. Karna In the last three Gitas, the questioner was Yudhisthira and the teacher
was born of virgin Kunti. Even the Pandavas were not fathered by was his grandfather Bhisma on the surface level of the discourse. The
any mortal. They spring directly from the unconscious, to put it in question has never been put forward to outwit the addressee. Besides
terms of Jungian psychology. the questions have been asked in most cases only to learn the road to
But one wonders, whether this eulogy of loneliness strikes at the peace and liberation from birth and death cycle. Because in the society
root of human society or not? Well the risis would perhaps answer of the Mahabharata a priori belief in the transmigration of soul is
that this society and worldly life is all myth and moonshine. The earlier universal. Any narrative as such either forges or represents a society
we get rid of it the better. which has its own value-system and beliefs. We can not do justice to
Bh. Gita also lauds the aniketah and the sangavarjitah as the such narratives unless we judge them in the context of the value-system
role model over and over again. of such narratives. At the same time we are at liberty to read them
from the value-system of our own time. The teacher, Bhisma in the
earlier three gitas, however, gives his replies to the inquisitive one,
neither to convince, nor to out-wit him. He simply answers to questions
raised before him, to the best of his knowledge and wisdom. There is
no trace of arrogance on the part of Bhisma. That is why he does not
Manki Gita 51 52 ... A Study of the GITAS in the Mahabharata
reply on his own. On the contrary he quotes a similar situation, where Manky exclaimed that personal prowess cannot undo the decree of
a wise man has answered a likely question. This further underlines the fate. He further adds,
fact that, the Mahabharata feels that the truths of the spirit must be Sometimes personal prowess succeeds,
culled from the wisdom of the ancients. May be fresh political or But that is also predetermined by divinity.
Hence, one who seeks happiness should
economic truths are the exigencies of an emergent political or economic be indifferent to success or failure.
situation. But the truth of the spirit is the time honoured one. If one is indifferent one has no
In this Manki Gita also Yudhisthira is the person who asks & Bhisma anxiety. One can sleep in peace.
seeks to resolve his doubts. The B.G. has over and over again prescribed that one had better
Yudhisthira asks—Those who can not get enough money, will be act but one must not worry as to its results. Manki says the same thing
after money only. How could they attain happiness in that case? in a very down-to-the-earth way. Of course, to sleep in peace, is all
May be Yudhisthira does not ask this question for his own sake. that constitutes happiness in Manki’s view (cp Bodhya Gita). There is
He has been crowned of late after the battle. In the role of a king he a sense of humour in Manki’s parole.
must see to that his subjects are happy. But, they do not get enough Now Manki remembers what Sukdeva, the son of Vedavyasa, the
money. How could they be happy? What does Yudhisthira mean by renowned risi & author of the Mahabharata said while entering the
happiness in this context? forests.
Bhisma says that happiness does not depend upon material gains, One who attains all that one desires is by all means inferior to one
Bhisma posits that (1) one who looks upon loss or gain with equa- who gives up all the objects of desire. Because, no one has ever been
nimity, (2) one who does not work hard for anything, (3) one who able to cross all the possible objects of desire. Hence the thirst for
speaks the truth, (4) one who is indifferent to the worldly life & (5) body and zest for life increase only among the fools.
one who has no desire to achieve anything is the happy man. These The imagery in Sukdeva’s speech is unique. The fulfilment of one’s
are the five steps to happiness. They constitute heaven and dharma. desire is never possible. The landscape of the objects of desire is
So say the wise. boundless. The journeyman along the road of life can hardly cross it.
In other words mundane possessions do not constitute happiness. This reminiscence of Sukdeva’s speech impels Manki to a soliloquy
It all depends on the attitude of man towards life & things. —
To defend his contention Bhisma quotes the Manky Gita Oh mind full of desire! Get rid of greed. You have failed over & over again
Bhisma first delineates the context in which Manki sang. At the in getting your objects of desire. Still you are not wise. If you really want to joy
in me, and if I am not to be destroyed, do not link me up with greed. Oh! you
outset Manki was after money, somehow he managed to get some greedy of wealth. Your possessions have been over and over again set-aside.
and with that he bought two calves. He looked after the calves with Yet, you greedy of wealth, you are seldom free from greed! How foolish I am
great care. Thereafter he put them with a plough and set out for the that I have been a plaything in your hands. Unless one becomes like that one
field to sow. On the road, they saw a camel. Scared, they jumped off would not slave under others.
the plough and fell on the camel itself. The camel thereby got irritated No one in the past has ever crossed the sea of desires. No one will do it in
the future. Hence I have given up all desires and I am wise now. I am awake.
and severely injured the cows. Finding the cows deeply wounded,
The story of Manki thus illustrates how, real life situations puzzle Our received notion of desire is that it paves the rose-strewn way to
one. Because, man proposes, but real life disposes. At such moments happiness. It is tender. It gratifies all our senses. But Manki’s
of confusion, only the scriptures or the wise sayings come to our aid. observation is otherwise. Desire, though tender in appearance is at
Earlier Manki was keen on using his personal prowess to fulfil his heart thunder-stern. Manki is now engaged in a mortal battle with his
aims. But now with the aid of the sayings of Sukdeva, he, all of a desires. And to his awe he finds that the thunder-hearted desire is
sudden has a revelation. He finds to his utter astonishment that what very difficult to overcome. However much desire is being attacked
he was actually doing earlier was to live a bondman of his mind that with power & force, it does not go asunder. Thus the humble Manki is
breeds desire. Why should he direct his prowess to serve another’s engaged in a heroic battle with his own desires. It is more terrible,
whims? His master in this case was his mind only. Why should he not more thrilling and more engrossing than the battle at Kurukshetra.
overpower his mind and make it a slave of his, instead of allowing it to Does not Bhisma hereby, citing Manki’s case, suggest that the Pandavas
be his master? Indeed, mind is just an organ of man. When man is
though having conquered their enemies at the battle of Kurukshetra
overpowered by a part of his, by a belonging of his, he is crippled. Is
have not conquered all. They must have conquest within; the real
it not a parable to tell us that instead of being masters of our possessions
Kurukhestra is in one’s being. This is what the BH.G. also tells especially
we are reduced to their slaves. We are slaves to our objects of
in the Kshetra Kshetrajnayoga. Manki’s fight with his Desire puts in
pleasure—radios, TV., refrigerator and we are crippled in this age of
one’s mind Buddha’s battle with Mara and Jesus’ battle with Satan.
consumerism. Capitalism and the media are ever keen on creating
Desire creates delusion. It never gives happiness. Manki has realised
fresh desires in us. There is no point in blaming them—the creation of
our desiring mind. Once we bauk our mind, we can contain capitalism this at last. And he will no more be a prey to Kama or Temptation.
and its consequences. This parable of Manki is time & again. It narrates Earlier he had saved money impelled by Temptation. It came to a
a so-called insignificant tale but its suggestions are widely embracing. nought. Manki’s life is arehetypal. Everyone of us has striven hard to
Similar parables are strewn all over the ancient literature of the epic attain some goal. But reality always fell short of our ideal. Do we not
age. There is the Kuddala Jataka for example. There a wood-cutter now feel that our hopes have been dupes? But desire must be destroyed
after a lot of vacillation finally succeeds to fling his axe into the waters at its root. The root-cause, of desire Manki discovers is sankalpa or
& gives out a loud shout exclaiming that he has conquered! In this a decision to achieve something. Manky now says that he will
parable of Manki Gita cited by Bhisma however the importance of henceforth have, no aim no goal. He has nothing to achieve in life. No,
history in human life is explicit. Indeed the Mahabharata is a gold- he is not even keen to protect his body even. He has even overcome
mine of such history & hence it has been called by its author as the his libido or zest for life. He addresses his body & says that its five
prince of all history–an itihasa of prime importance that could lead us elements might go asunder. The body he abhors. Because it is the
through the encircling gloom. breeding ground of ego and greed. According to Freud, man is always
Be that as it may now that Manki asserts himself against his own impelled by the two opposites in eros or the zest for life and thanatos
mind, he is in control of his mind. And he gives tongue to his emergent or urge for death. Once Manki gets rid of the zest for life he does not
realisation. He can now look at desires from an aesthetic detachment. fear death. He has no feeling for death. He is now instinct with
Sattvaguna. He looks upon the opposites in the existence with this strife-torn world might be, we could be there as if bathed in cool
equanimity of mind. He is no longer drawn to the differences in the stream and cool water. Manki says–
existence. It is difference indeed of one thing from another, of one I am now well seated in the Infinite. I am like a cool lake in the hot summer.
being from another that has created this worldly life, desire-lorn and Does not Manki thereby invite the groaning humanity to come to
strife-torn. Now Manki is engrossed with the Brahman or the Vast him and partake of his peace?
and wanders about perceiving the one everywhere within and without.
Hence if any one hurts him or maligns him, he will not strike back.
Because he does have no enemy any longer Manki addresses greed
& desire and says – Go away from me; I am now firmly settled in
Sattvaguna.
The desire that Manki abhors is the tanha that Lord Buddha
debunks. Once it is overcome, one attains nibbana, in this life according
to Lord Buddha. Bhisma had earlier pointed out that instead of abstract
ideals, lives of the saints should be studied and imitated. Here is a
role-model for us.
Manki Gita is at bottom a criticism of life getting & spending. It
points out what desire has made of man. Desire is ignorant. Hence
desire always falls a prey to the objects it desires. It is like fire. It has
no value judgement. It burns everything whatever. It tries to tie up
human being with unplumbed depths of sorrow that likens the
netherworld.
Desire is indeed a character in the Manki Gita. It reminds one of
the Morality dramas of English Literature of the Middle Ages where
abstract ideas like virtue and vice participate as characters.
The Manki Gita is however significantly different from the earlier
gitas at least on one count. While the earlier gitas were dialogues
between a teacher & a taught, between Sanaka and Vritra, or Bodhya
and Yayati, Manki Gita is a soliloquy in which Manki addresses his
mind and desires in an ecstatic mood. Indeed when we can address
our mind and bully it we are greater than our mundane selves and we
are no longer preys to our circumstances. However much aburning
artha and kama. Which one of them is higher an ideal, and which one
CHAPTER - VI
of them is less in importance.
SADJA GITA Vidura, the venerated uncle of Yudhisthira replies that dharma is of
prime importance. Dharma with Vidura implies law that impels nature.
Every Gita so far has been the conversation between Bhisma and
But since men have freedom of choice, dharma constitutes, wide
Yudhisthira as the frame. The Sadja Gita on the other hand has the
studies, penance, sacrifice, respect, rituals, pardoning others, kindness
conversation between Vaisampayana and Janamejaya as the frame.
truth and self-control. Vidura observes that the worldly life has been
Janamejaya is the grandson of Yudhisthira and his four brothers. Thus
crossed by the saints only through the observation of dharma. Dharma
Sadja Gita is much later in time than the earlier gitas. While in course
with mankind means to love one’s neighbour as one’s own self.
of conversation with Yudhisthira, Bhisma cites the specehes by kings
Vidura however does not altogether discard economic pursuit. He
and saints of yore as the gita, Vaisampayana here cites the conversation
says that the pursuit for money is next in importance to the pursuit of
among the five brothers and Vidura—the six as the gita before
dharma.
Janamejaya. This shows how history is being made. While the tale of
Arjuna, however, puts forward a different view. With him this world
Vritra or Bodhya makes the history for Bhisma & Yudhisthira,
is meant for different economic activities such as farming, trade &
Yudhisthira himself becomes the part of history for later generation.
commerce, industry & craft & so on. To follow such economic activity
Thus the Mahabharata does not invoke history or myths only, it shows
one must have money. If one has to attain the two other objects of
how mythicisation takes place. What is present today becomes past
dharma and kama, one must have money first. Arjuna uses a wonderful
tomorrow and becomes the source of knowledge for tomorrow. We
image to explain himself. With him dharma and kama are but the physical
are decentred from the present of one point of time to the present of
features of economic substructure.
another point of time. While the earlier gitas were chiefly conversatons
A modern mind is struck with surprise at what Arjuna says. It was
between two persons viz Vritra & Sanaka or Bodhya and Yayati or a
only in the nineteenth century that the Jewish—German philosopher
soliloquy of Harita or Manki, here is a conversation among six persons,
Karl Marx pointed out that literature, art and whatever is there in the
cited as the gita. Since six persons participated in the present gita it is
name of culture, including the relationship between man & man have
Sadja Gita. It opens as it were posing a question in response to the
not originated on their own. They constitute the super-structure of the
earlier gitas The earlier gitas unanimously posit that renunciation is the
society of which economic forces are the substructure. Marx
road to peace. But the frame of reference of the age of the Mahabharata
maintained that the literature and society of any particular age is at
pins its faith on the varnasrama & chaturvarga as the ideal way of life.
heart impelled by the economic forces of the time. While Carlyle &
In the Harita Gita, it is said that one who has renounced must not be in
Ruskin debunked economics an emergent discipline of study in the
touch with those who have embraced vana prastha even. Thus the
19th century, as the Gospel of Mammon the economists themselves
earlier gitas have not paid any attention at all to the varnasrama. The
defended Economics saying that what they studied was not money as
varnasrama theme has been taken up here for discussion.
an end in itself but man in relation to money to satisfy his everyday
The Sadja Gita opens with the query of Yudhisthira—
need. Arjuna seems to voice the same idea in the Mahabharata.
Three objects impel human beings to act in life. They are dharma,
Sadja Gita 59 60 ... A Study of the GITAS in the Mahabharata
And if we take the cue from Arjuna is it not legitimate to interpret Desire is like oil in the oil-seed. It is the butter in the whay. Desire is
the Mahabharata and the gitas and the whole of Puranic literature and the fountain head of all dharma and economic activities.
the ancient culture from economic point of view? In modern psyche a conflict is raging between Marxism and
Arjuna further underlines his point by saying—Even the recluses Psychological Interpretation of life and activity. Marxism has discarded
can not do without wealth. So wealth is of prime importance in life. the hypothesis of a spirit that impels all thinking things and all objects
The way Arjuna describes the saints as in need of money has no of all thoughts and replaced it with economic force. Consequently
prejudice against the so called saints, saints only in appearance. They Marx finds the society as torn between the haves and have-nots. Marx
don their saintly robes only to keep away the wolf of hunger. is all for the latter. And his is the call for the arms on behalf of the have-
Be that as it may, Arjuna’s world-view seems to contradict the nots. But Freud stands in the way like Bhimasena.
world—views of Harita and Bodhya. He argues that every human activity is propelled by desire at bottom.
The critics of Marx observe, that economic forces are not always And since the desire of a labourer and that of the rich man is equally
the ones to impel a period’s culture. On the contrary, a particular charged with Id, the difference between the haves and have nots is
period’s culture might determine the economic forces of the time. true on the surface. Actually one can not be distinguished from the
Nakula and Sahadeva in response to Arjuna’s reductionism of history other. Power corrupts man and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
to economic forces take an eclectic stand. They posit that every man And every man, be it a prince or pauper, instinct with the same kind of
should always seek money no doubt. But money is never an end in desire, will behave in self same manner in the same objective condition.
itself as the economists of today would testify. If money is not properly Be that as it may, Bhimsena, therefore, observes that desire should
utilised in pursuit of dharma and kama, in pursuit of the well-being of be pursued with as much zeal as the two other objects of life in dharma
the society & in pursuit of the physical and spiritual well-being of the and artha.
self, it is not money indeed. One thing is very clear from the speeches of Arjuna and Bhimsena,
Bhimasena, however posits otherwise. With him eros or Kama is Nakula and Sahadeva. They do not want to repress the a priori instincts
at bottom of human existence. Here Bhimsena seems to be one with of man. On the contrary they want to sublimate them. Harmonising
Freud, the psychologist par excellence. While Marx posits that every them to a particular end whereby both the individual and the society
human behaviour is actuated by the hidden forces of economic want, become the beneficiaries.
Bhimasena observes that even economic wants are actuated by Eros The discourse is clinched up by the speech of Yudhistira. He frankly
or Kama or zest for life. Freud has been much misunderstood. When tells that one who is not drawn to activity with a view to getting at
he says that every activity of a man is impelled by sex and sex alone he reward in heaven or in this life is a right doer. He gives equal weightage
does not mean physical sex by it. The connotation of sex is as wide as on stone and a piece of gold. He does not pay heed to any of the three
that of Kama. And Bhimasena like Freud observes—Even the penance objects of life—dharma, artha and kama. He perceives that everything
of the ascetics who are plunged in trance is also instinct with desire. whatever in this world is subject to decay and death. The ideal person
Those who are engaged in rituals are also driven by desires. The wants to get rid of that. One who has cultivated affection for anything
different economic and artistic activities are also impelled by desires. or any being in the world is miserably caught up in the net of worldly
life. Hence one must not be drawn to any thing or abhor anything. All of them are reductionists. They reduce the varied and variegated
Finally Yudhisthira posits that since man cannot do anything on his world of appearance as being impelled by one single force be it
own and since God is all powerful, there is no point in pursuing dharma, economic or sex or God.
artha and kama—the three objects of life. The fourth object of life viz. This is not all. In the society of the Mahabharata they pin their faith
moksha or liberation from this worldly life is all that man should look on varnasrama and caturvarga Krishna himself says in the BH.G.
forward to. that it was he who forged the caturvarna in the society. The concept of
Yudhisthira’s speech satisfies all his four brothers and everybody varna is associated with asrama. The first three varnas must go through
else present during the discourse. the four stages of life or chaturasrama.
The Sadja Gita as we have already pointed out is quite different In the childhood they must live with their teacher and lead a life in
from the earlier gitas in as much as more people participate in the the midst of strict discipline. They will be away from the so-called
discourse. Actually Sadja Gita taken apart from the Mahabharata likens comforts of life. In youth, however, they will join the worldly life and
the Interlude of medieval English drama. In an interlude there is a pursue dharma, artha and kama.
contest of words among its protagonists. Finally one among them They must earn money. They must have their object of desire. But
outwits others and the drama comes to its close. But unlike an interlude everything should be directed towards personal peace and happiness
here the participants in this discourse are highly serious in their speeches as well as towards the peace and happiness of their neighbours.
and opinions and they are keen to know the truth. Krishna himself in Thereafter comes the third stage. It is during old age. They give up the
the BH.G. says that he is debate itself of the debators. worldly life for a life in the forest. Finally the fourth stage turns up
In other words, he is all for debates only when such debates are when each one of them is in communion with the Brahman The concept
meant for determining the truth in the face of conflicting arguments on of the caturvarna and caturasrama have been very precisely dwelled
any issue. The Sadja Gita is a model of such arguments among the on by Madalasa in the Markandeya Purana
seekers of truth. Curiously enough Yudhisthira in his discourse seems to openly
The arguments as put forward here seem to observe the rules of discard this notion of varnasrama and chaturasrama. He posits that
the Nyaya in the outline. Because every speaker has his or direct liberation from this worldly life is all that matters. Hence it follows that
observation. For example Arjuna finds everyman in persuit of wealth, the second asrama becomes irrelevant. Or else, he observes that one
i.e., his pratyaksa. There is already the sabda everyone should persue might be in any stage of life, Whatever station and duties, one might
wealth as a part of the caturvarga. be thrust into, Yudhisthira points out that since God almighty determines
This sabda was given by Yudhisthira. The anumana or inference everything for us, we have no object in life to pursue. Let custom have
is that economic force impels every activity. its way. Let the body have its way. Man has nothing to do. So man’s
The thesis of Arjuna, however, is contradicted by the same of Nakula, fortunes are never tainted by what his body or mind does. This happens
Sahadeva or Bhima and so on; consequently their inferences differ. only when man is aware of it. Otherwise if he identifies his body or
But there is one particular point common in the speeches of Arjuna, mind, with the self, he must undergo the consequences of the same
Bhima and Yudhisthira as well as of the 19th century modern thinkers. and journey through joys and sorrow & go through births & deaths.
That is the contention of Yudhisthira. In other words, dharma or laws, sense. The philosopher of the Mimamsa school Jaimini defined
artha or money, and kama or desire, when in harmony could make dharma as that of which the characteristic is injunction or vidhis. This
this world a better place for living, Yudhisthira feels that despite all means that dharma is an obligation decreed by the Vedas to perform
possible joys upon earth, man had better try to get rid of the birth & karma or to such acts which bring of itself no reward. Only thing is
death & rebirth cycle of the existence. that its non-performance would be that which is not dharma and
Yudhisthira’s speech thus in a sense is revolutionary in the context enjoin upon the doer sin. Yudhisthira however does not pin his faith
of the ideals of varnasrama and chaturvarga since, Yudhisthira on any ritual as such. If the doer is fully aware of the truth of existence,
underlines the ideals of moksha, the fourth in sequence of dharma, according to Yudhisthira, no matter whether he performs dharma or
artha and kama as the all in all, be it into whatever station & duties adharma, he will be touched by no sin. So does Krishna say in the
man is thrust. Moksha means liberation. It implies liberation from the BH.G.
rewards of pious acts as well as from the retribution of unholy deeds. One who sees everything in God and God in everything never com-
Liberation means liberation from heaven & hell. No, heaven can not mits sin do whatever he will. But the society as it is now cannot afford
be the object of a man’s journey. In Indian frame of reference no such truths. Socrates was given a fair trial & he was found guilty.
external heaven is assured unlike in the Bible. The BH.G. says—Heaven Jesus was also given a fair trial in the light of his day & he was found
is a place where one is rewarded for his pious acts. Once the reaping guilty.
of the pious, acts are over, one has to come back on earth, once again And is it surmising too far, that Yudhisthira could not therefore rule
to journey through its weal & woe. the king-dom of Hastinapur for long which he earned in lieu of great
Since moksha is all in all for Yudhisthira, he does not pin his faith on expenses. He was too much engrossed with the desire for moksha to
holy or unholy deeds. He speaks of the transvaluation of values. The rule his newly earned Kingdom.
BH.G. itself says that the vedas are concerned with the three gunas. The Sadja Gita is thus very significant an extract from the
One must rise above the three gunas. Mahabharata in the context of the plot of the Mahabharata and in the
Further more the BH.G. says—That just as waters flow into the context of its society as well as in the contexts of modern philosophy,
seas, so do pleasures flow into a being. Neither the seas nor should sociology and ethics.
the seer bother for that.
In other words man should not act. He should know that he is
always acted upon. Once he knows this he can do whatever he
chooses. He will be in peace. No sin will touch him.
Such a contention is perfectly all right for an individual seeker. One
might womanize knowing full well that he is not doing it. It is his prakiti
that does it. But from the point of view of a king such an ethics is not
perhaps practicable.
Practically Yudhisthira seems to discard dharma whole-sale in a
(Cp. bhunjati te tvagham papah ye pachantyatmakaranat

CHAPTER - VII
Bh.G. III) allow them. The clever people have introduced these
things in sacrificial rites impelled by their false ego and greed. The
VICHAKHNU GITA Brahmins know it very well that Lord Vishnu is to be worshipped
The Vichakhnu Gita is once again quoted by Bhisma to enlighten in every sacrificial rite. Food prepared from milk and flour are the
the King Yudhisthira. The theme of Bhisma’s discourse is piety and only offerings to be made. The trees ear-marked by the Vedas are
kindness for animals. Bhisma in this context quotes what the king to be used in the sacrificial rites. Offerings that are prepared with
Vichakhnu exclaimed at the sight of a slaughtered ox lying near the sattva attitude are alone worthy of offering to gods.
site of a sacrificial rite. To his utter dismay the king found quite a In reply Yudhisthira observes that one who is non-violent finds
number of cows awaiting there to be slaughtered. The King at once himself in a queer situation. His body and the objects of greed
wished long life for those animals and decreed that there should be quarrel among themselves. And thereby to keep up the body be-
no animal sacrifice. He observed that the fools only support comes a problem.
violence. They don’t believe in goodness. They do not have any self Bhisma observes that one must not let one’s body to be weak.
respect. They are never free from doubts. Their minds are always It must not be subject to death. Unless the body is healthy, it is not
restless. The king refers to Manu and says that according to Manu possible to observe the dictates of dharma & piety.
non-violence is great. When people sacrifice animals at the altar Though very brief in its compass Vichakhnu Gita is singularly
they do it from greed and lowly desire only. The king admits that significant for its message. It clearly points out that animal slaughter
there are mutually conflicting decrees laid down by the different especially cow-slanghter at the altar of sacrifice was widely
scriptures. The wise should decide which one is right in the light of practised during the days of the Mahabharata. But the King,
the vijnana. Whatever be the different decrees, the truly pious and Vichakhnu bans it. In the official history it was the Buddhist King.
the authors of dharma advocate that ahimsa or non-violence is the Asoka who debunked animal slaughter. But indeed no one king
noblest of them all. Observation of fasting or other rules are alright. could all of a sudden decree like that unless there was a public
But one must give up the desires for the fruitions that the Vedas opinion in support of it. The Mahabharata is all out against animal
advocate. The so-called rituals are simply travesty of them. They slaughter. It shoots a sharp shaft of satire against the Vedic rites.
are not rules but deviations from rules. Only the miserly people, the The King asks them to ignore the promises held out by the Vedas.
narrow minded ones observe them to get at mundane results. If you He is all for non-violence which is the essence of all religion. On the
say they cut the trees only to raise the altar for sacrifice and the surface the Mahabharata is thus opposed to the Vedas. The Bh.G.
meat of the sacrificial animal is not just meat ; it has been offered also observes
to the gods. Then according to the king Vichanknu this is not the yamimam pushpitam vacham pravadantya vipaschitam
truth. True religion never acknowledges such sacrilege. Wine, fish, vedavadaratah partha nanyadastitivadinah
honey, meat, narcotics & food prepared from rice and pulse—these And yet VG refers to vedas as the source of religions rities.
have been introduced in sacrifices by the clever. The Vedas do not yajnyaschaiva ye vriksha vedesu parikalpeta
Vichakhnu Gita 67 68 ... A Study of the GITAS in the Mahabharata
In fact it seems that the Mahabharata does not have any real frequency. The Mahabharata is all for the Vishnu form of the omni-
antagonism to the Vedas. It strikes hard at the root of the then present. (Cp. Aham kraturaham yajna (Bh.G. ch. IX)
received meaning of the Vedic rites. Sacrifice itself means non- It seems that the Mahabharata is a testimony of the rise of the
violence. yajnam adhvaram. But the Mahabharata & the king nascent Vishnu cult or Vaishnavism.
Vichaknu seek hereby to revive the Vedas in their pristine purity. Be that as it may Yudhisthira’s speech in response to Bhishma’s
This speech of Vichakhnu however seems to indicate that the tantric exhortation is very significant.
practices were widely popular during the days of the Mahabharata. Sariramapadschapi vivadantyavihimsitah katham yatra sarirasya
Sura matsya madhu mansam asavam i.e. wine, fish, honey, niaranmbhasya setsyate.
meat, and narcotic. Here is an imagery which speaks of the body engaged in strife
are almost sine qua non with trantric rites. Although some of the with the object of greed. Tena tyakten bhunjithah says the
tantric authors advocate the symbolic use of them they are very Isoponisada. What He himself gives up is enjoyed by Himself only.
much in use materially in tantric rites. And such practice as the V. We throw away rotten crumbs of bread. There are so many insects
G. testifies was widely spread during the epic age. More to it. There and micro-organisms who live on it. Actually predators live on the
are scholars now a days who claim that the tantras are not direct flesh of other animals. There are animals who live on trees and
descendants of the Vedas. The Hindu tantras had their origin in plants and mosses the graminivorous ones. How can one live
Buddist esoterism. But the Mahabharata’s testimony goes against it. without violence in this world. If some one really observes non-
King Vichakhnu finds that the Vedic rites have already evolved into violence, his body shall be at war with those things on which it could
trantric rites during the days of the Mahabharata. And surely live. That way the body cannot survive. In other words Yudhisthira
according to Vichakhnu this was due to the misunderstanding of the received the message of V. Gita in its extreme manifestation. But
Vedas. Bhisma observes and The Jainas also agree perhaps that extreme
Curiously enough although the largest number of hymns in the non-violence is not possible in the human frame for the common run
Rg. Vedas have been addressed to either Indra or Agni, V. G. points of men.
out that Vishnu is all that is worshipped in the Yajnas. This is not at Here it should be noted that such phrases as Kripanah phala-
all against the Vedas. Because the Vedas over & over again hetava....also recur in Bh. G. Besides, yajna the main theme of V.
observes that whatever deity they worship represents all the other Gita has also been dwelled on in details in the Bh. G. of course from
deities. But unlike Indra or Agni, Vishnu is not that important a deity a wider angle.
in the Rg. Veda. Vishnu has been eulogised in almost all the gitas in
the Mahabharata. The Bhagavad Gita and the Anu Gita are
themselves the speeches of Krishna, the Vishnu in-carnate. Thus it
seems that the Vedas have been decentred in the Mahabharata.
People no longer worship Agni or Indra with that frequency. The
Mahabharata. People no longer worship Agni or Indra with that
punishes him. just as a hunter shoots a fidgeting deer.

CHAPTER - VIII
Sampaka says—weigh poverty and wealth in a balance. Poverty
has more merit. The rich people are always haunted by fear just as a
SAMPAKA GITA
man is haunted by the fear of death. One who is poor is happy, he
Sampaka Gita opens with Yudhisthira’s query regarding the origin goes to sleep in peace. Otherwise one has to carry a great load despite
of happiness and misery in human being rich or poor. oneself. One can not practise the good because of one’s restless mind.
Bhisma in reply repeats what Sampaka sang sampakena muktena According to Sampaka greed and lust for luxury are to blame for
gitam santigatena cha. after he attained blliss. Well, by the by as all the miseries in life. True that they say one should pursue artha and
Bhisma reports us Sampaka was hounded by hunger. He did not have kama along with dharma. But Sampaka observes that one should not
enough clothes. He had a wicked wife. pay any heed to such loka-dharma. One should take pre-emptive
Klishyamana kudarena kuchailena bubhuksaya (3) action so that misery does not take place. The mundane objects are
the resource of misery. The material world must be renounced.
There is ambiguity in this image. We do not know whether Sampaka
Thus the Sampaka Gita joins issue especially with the Sadja Gita.
had left his wife and attained bliss, or else despite the fact that he was
The latter deliberated on the four objects of life or Chaturvarga.
suffering from the excesses of a shrewish wife he was in bliss. Be that
Sampaka says the renunciation is all in all. Artha and Kama do not
as it may the poor man’s plight has been vividly portrayed in the image
deliver happiness.
of Klisyamana kudarena kuchailena bubhuksaya. A little later in
course of the Gita the image of a rich man has been delineated—
Dhanavan krodhalobhyabhyamavisto nasta chetasah
Tirygeekshah suskamukhah papako bhrukutimukhah
Nirdasannadharosthancha kruddho daruna-bhasita
Kastamichhet paridrastum datumichhati chenmahim. ( 13, 14 )
The rich man is engrossed with greed and anger. He loses his value
judgement thereby. He always looks at things shrewdly. His face is
dry. His eye-brows are always curved. He is always engaged in unholy
deeds. He bites his lips in a huff. His speech is rough. Even if he wants
to give away the whole of the world no one wants to see his face.
Here is a vivid portrait of a rich man, the Volpone. Wealth distracts his
mind. Just as the wind scatters the autumnal clouds, pride of wealth
and beauty possesses him. He dreams himself to be extra-ordinary &
successful and noble. His lust for luxury becomes pronounced; he
exhausts all his inheritance. Then he seeks to dispossess others driven
by lust. He deviates from every code of conduct. Finally the king
class division during the Vedic and Puranic ages. The society in those
CHAPTER - IX
days assign a particular set of duties to a particular varna. Thus the
Brahmins were supposed to study the scripture and disseminate its
PARASARA GITA teachings among the masses. The Kshatriya should devote himself to
The gita opens with Yudhisthira’s query as to the right action. Bhisma the needs of administration. The Vaisya should be engaged in different
says in reply that a similar question was put forward by the King economic activities. The Sudra should serve all the above three classes.
Janaka before the sage Parasara. Bhisma only cites what the sage One must not deviate from the duties as determined by one’s station
told Janaka in response to Janaka’s query. in the society. Parasara himself says :
In view of the fact that Parasara was the father of the author of the pratigrahagata vipre ksatryo yudhi nirjitah.
vaisye nyayarijitaschaiva sudre susrusayarjitah
Mahabharata, the Parasara Gita has surely a special niche in the gamut
svalpapyarthah prasasyante dharmasvarthe mahaphalah
of this great epic. nityam trayanam varnanam susrusuh sudra uchyate
Parasara tells that the practice of dharma is all that one can pursue ksatradharma vaisyadharma navrittih patate dvijah
in life here and hereafter. sudradharma yadatu syat tada patati tu dvijah. (P.G- V, 1-3)
dharma eva kritah sreyaniha loke paratra ca (P.G- I, 6) By pursuing the tasks assigned by the society men perform pious
The term dharma is untranslateble. It has no semantic equivalent deeds as well as unholy ones. As they sow, so do they reap. Parasara
in English Language. Therefore it is variously translated as duty, religion, takes for granted the concept of the transmigration of soul and claims
justice law, ethics, principle and so on. It seems that dharma includes that our present state is the result of our activities in our earlier lives
all these and something more. Be that as it may dharma according to and our activities in this life here will shift us from the station and duties
Parasara implies station and duties : of this birth to those of the next birth. Thus our journey will continue
asminasraminah santah svakarmaniha kurvate ceaselessly through births and deaths and births again. And Parasara
chaturvidha hi lokesmin yatra tata vidhiyate admits that no activity in this world as such could be full of unmixed
martya yatravatisthante sa cha kamat pravartate (AG- I, 8, 9 ) piety.
Here Parasara takes into account the four varnas in Bramhana, Hence eternal happiness is absurd in this work-a-day world where
Kshatria, Vaisya and Sudra. one must act. Be that as it may Parasara feels that what we do is not
The notion of varna is rather ambiguous. It might refer to a system the point. How do we do it is to be taken into account Control of the
of colour symbolism. The Brahmins were associated with white, the senses, kindness, patience, energetic activity, contentment, truthfulness,
colour of purity and lightness : Kshatriyas with red—the colour of shyness, non-violence and the extinction of desires, however could
passion & energy ; the Vaisyas with Yellow, the colour of the earth lead one to happiness. He will not be coloured by his good deeds or
and the Sudras with black the colour of darkness and inertia. (P-59, bad deeds any longer. He will be then plunged in the reality or the soul
An Introduction to Hinduism, Gavin Flood, Cambridge University of souls.
Press, Great Britian, 1996). The same colour symbolism has been Thus Parasara asks them to perform their duties as per their station
already referred too in the Vritra Gita. The Varna division refers to in the society. But one must perform them in disinterested manner.
Parasara Gita 73 74 ... A Study of the GITAS in the Mahabharata
Only then according to Parasara one is never coloured by his actions. those who perform a bad deed unknowingly. There is no excape from
One, therefore, is spared of reaping his actions surely then. One thereby sin; one must reap its results. On the other hand men through good
escapes the birth and death and rebirth cycle. acts are elevated from one varna to another, one class to another
But may we ask whether keeping to the station and duties is at all through the birth and death cycle. Actually one is coloured by the
necessary provided one gets rid of all desires? In the 6th chapter of deeds he performs just as clothes contract the dye that it touches.
P. G. Parasara frankly tells us that men are bound by their love and The sudra is in the lowest rung. The vaisya class is superier to that.
affection in their family life. Kshatriyas are superior to the vaisyas and so on. But the king Janaka
prayena grihasthasya mamatvam nama jayate ( P.G- VI, 2 ) puts a searching question in this context.
And that sows in him desires and these desires propel him from yadetaja jayate apatyam sa evayamiti srutih
one life to another contrary to the belief of the common run of men. katham brahmanato jato visesa grahanam yatah (P.G -VII, 2)
Parasara posits that the bereavement and loss of wealth should be If man is the child of God, why should there be difference among
deemed as blessings. Because it evokes in man vairagya or indifference men? It is said that the father is in the child or reversely child is the
to the worldly life. It is at this critical juncture of life only man seeks to father reincarnated. Why should there be hierarchy in that case?
know the truth about the world and existence. He wants to know of Parasara’s argument in this context is there along two axes. Firstly,he
himself. He studies the scriptures to that end and feels the exigency of alludes to the Vedas and posits that the Brahmins were born from the
tapasya. Tapas means inner heat or spiritual energy. It implies the mouth of the creator while the Kshariyas were born from the hands of
control of the senses and the extinction of desire whereby the spiritual the creator & so on. This reminds us of the Purusasukta in the Rg.
energy is generated. Parasara believes that every man in this society Veda.
has the right to tapasya. Even the lowly of the lowest has the right to it Brahmanosya mukhamasid vahu rajanyakritah
: uru tadasya yad vaisyah padbhyam sudro ajayata
tapah sarvagatan hinasyapi vidhiyate (P.G- VI, 14 ) The Purusasuka speaks of a time when there was the creator
alone. The four castes emerge from the four parts of his body. But one
Parasara however uses the word tapasya in the wider sense of the
is apt to ask whether any part of this primordial being is inferior to any
term and says that whatever good happens to a person is the result of
other part of his. How is that possible? Even today the brahmins,
his tapasya. That is, performance of the good deeds as assigned by
begin their rituals with the meditation of the feet of that Purusa.
one’s station & duties result in some happiness transient though and
tadvisnoh paramam padam sada
all his good deeds are surely a kind of tapasya. But such tapasya does
pasyanti surayah diviva
not liberate one from birth and death cycle. Extinction of desire, chaksuratatam.
however, could rescue one from birth and death and re-birth. Does it not necessarily follow that a brahmin is supposed to serve
If bad deeds result in misfortunes, one might ask—is there no the Sudras who leaped to life from the feet of Vishnu, the Primordial
penance whereby one could expiate his sins & redeem himself? Pusura. But the scriptures that hold out Varnasrama in the large are
Parasara says that prayaschitta or redemption is possible only for mum on the issue.
Parasara Gita 75 76 ... A Study of the GITAS in the Mahabharata
The second line of argument that Purasara proposes is that due to Parasara Gita thus touches upon quite many important issues
meaner activity the chidlren of god degenerated. And hence there has pertaining to the society of the Mahabharata such as varnasrana,
been the hierarchy assigning them their respective station & duties. Be transmigration of soul, karmphala, tapasya and so on. The Bhagavad
that as it may Gita. touches upon all these issues from a more comprehaensive point
yami karmani ahimsrani naram trayanti sarvada (P.G- VII, 36) of view which we will dwell on later.
Non-violence rescues every man. And even the lower caste men could
prove themselves to be pristine pure through tapasya or penance :
rajannaitad bhaved grahyam apakristena janmana
mahatmanam samutpattistapasa bhavitatmanam (P.G- II, 12)
Although Parasara elaborately dwells on the don’ts of every man,
and on the hierarchy of caste and their respective duties, it seems that
he holds tapasya as the highest activity that man can avail himself of.
Everyone, as it has been already pointed out, has the right to tapasya.
Even the brahmin will give up the Vedic rituals and live indifferently to
the world. The indifference to the world transforms one’s intellect.
One’s intellect becomes settled & thereby one escapes the fruitions of
one’s activities. Renuciation is thus lauded. But there are hurdles in the
way. The demons try to enter into their bodies and overcome them.
tat dharmamasurastata namrisyanta janadhipah
vivardhamanah kramasastatra tenvavisan prajah. (P.G- V, 10)
They stand for ignorance :
Ekah satrurna dvityosti satrurajnanatulya purusasya rajan
yenavritah kurute samprayukto ghorani karmani sudarunani.
( P.G- VIII, 28)
Consequently the seeker has to join in a mortal battle with ignorance
and the devils. This has been vividly delineated already in Manki Gita.
One must in this context note that when Parasara says that the Brahmin
should renounce the Vedic injunctions of maintaining his sacred fire :
sannyasagninudasinah pasyanti vigatajvarah. [PG VII 37]
Does he not relinquish culture thereby? He is attempting to
transcend culture for a pure trans-human realm of spiritual liberation.
cannot take place, whenever it is asked for.

CHAPTER - X
Revelation visits us only at hours of crisis. We can illustrate this,
ANU GITA I from the lives of the saints and god-men all over the world. No, not
even can Krishna the God-incarnate communicate the divine logos to
As we have already observed, there are quite a number of gitas
his dearest friend and devotee whenever he wills. This is made clear
scattered all about the Mahabharata. May be there are more gitas
through his repeated acknowledgement of his inability to repeat the
than what we note here in our discourse. The crown and coping stone
Bhagavad Gita in
of them all is Srimad Bhagavat Gita that was told by Krishna, at the
na ca sadya punarbhuyah smritirme Sambhavisyati
battlefield of Kurukshetra. Arjuna asks Krishna to retell the contents
na sakyam punarvaktum asesena dhananjayah [AG I.10]
of the Bhagavadgita or what Krishna said earlier during the battle of
Is not God himself circumscribed by the circumstances, when he is
Kurukshetra.
in human frame?
Arjuna says that he has forgotten what he was told by Krishna
Besides this focuses on a significant indicator of what a gita is like.
earlier at Kurukshetra. This confession is significant. It proves that
It is always unique. It is always spoken in ecstasy when one is beyond
even if God himself appears in front of us in all his glory, the experi-
one’s self. It is always as it were spoken for the first time and never to
ence of his grandeur, the hearing of his speech does not liberate us
be repeated again.
presently. It can only leave a trace in our heart that might increase our
thirst for further communication with the divine. This puts in our mind The phrase yogayukta implies a state of ecstasy, when one is
the story of Dhruva as told in the Srimad Bhagavata. He sighted Lord beyond himself. Then only, one can speak of the Brahman or the truly
Visnu very early in his life. But that did not instantly liberate him. He Big. Hence all our deliberations on Brahman are word-deep only.
had to undergo the worldly duties thrust upon him by the society like They donot give us the truth.
anyone else. Only thing is that the longing for Visnu, lingered in his By the by, Arjuna had earlier said
heart with greater intensity than ever. Sisyasteham Sadhi mam prapannam ( BH.G.- II,7)
Krishna in response to Arjuna’s speech chides Arjuna— I am your disciple; dictate me.
Nunamasraddadhanosi durmedhyasi Pandava (AG- I, 11 ) Krishna had also earlier acknowledged him as a devotee.
bhaktosi me sakhaceti
Krishna says—you did not hear me with right devotion. This is
Therefore, Krishna does not want to refuse his devotee and friend
bad of you.
Arjuna. He calls up to memory what a realised soul of a Brahmin who
Krishna further adds that he cannot repeat what he had told ear-
had presently alighted from heaven told him in response to his likely
lier. At the time, when the battle at Kurukshetra was about to burst
queries.
forth, Krishna says, that he was yoga-yukta or in ecstasy.
agachhad brahmano kascit svargalokadarindama
Param hi brahma Kathitam yogo-yukten tanmaya (AG- I,13) brahmalokacca durdharsah sosmabhih pujitobhavat
But right now that ecstatic mood cannot be revived. Asmabhih paripristasca yadaha bharatarsava
This speech is significant. Every time is not tea-time and revelation Divyena vidhina partha taccrnusvavicarayan. (A.G-I,15,16 )
Anu Gita I 79 80 ... A Study of the GITAS in the Mahabharata
This is also singularly significant. Earlier, in the Bhagavad Gita paricarena mahata gurum tat pariyatosayat. (AG-I, 26 )
Krishna, claimed that he is the Big, the Brahman Until & unless one is all devotion to his teacher, one cannot learn
Mama dehe gudakesa yaccanyad drastumiccasi ( B.H- XI,7 ) anything from him. Besides, until & unless the teacher is satisfied with
He said—The whole universe is in me. his disciple he cannot disseminate his knowledge to him.
But now he is as humble as a devotee who knelt before the Brahmin This underlines at least three significant points. Firstly, oral discourse
and asked for exhortations. is superior to written communication since it can convey higher truths.
The Brahmin however did not give exhortations on his own. He Secondly the addressee always determines the speech. Thirdly
told Krishna, what a realised soul had said to Kashyapa, in reply to knowledge or language cannot be communicated at one’s will. May
the latter’s questions. Kashyapa, by the by, was not an ordinary be knowledge disseminates itself on its own using the teacher as its
enquirer. He had already learnt the mysteries of life & death. What tool. This is why Krishna, cannot repeat what he had said at the
was Kasyapa’s teacher like? battleground of Kurukshetra.
Carantam muktavat siddham prasantam samyatendryam Indeed all the gitas were told by its speakers only to those devotees
dipyamanam srya brahnya Kramamananca sarvasah who were all humility before their teachers. Krishna exhorted earlier—
antardhana gatijnanca srutva tattvena kasyapah. tadviddhi pranipatena pariprasnena sevaya ( B.G- IV, 34 )
tathaivantarhite siddhairyantam cakradharaih saha
sambhasanamekante samasinanca taih saha Learn that by way of falling at the feet of your teacher, serving him
yadricchaya ca gacchantam asaktam pavanam yatha (A.G- 22,24 ) and putting forward your queries.
In other words a realised soul is aglow with a light that is never on Now begins the conversation between Siddha & Kashyapa which
sea or land. He can converse with beings invisible to the mortal eye. could be called Siddha-Gita and a subset of Anugita.
He moves wherever he lists, like the air. Such a description of the Siddha says that man can excelsior to higher planes like Mahaloka
realised soul affirms that gross material body cannot always keep its and Janaloka through pious deeds. In other words there are, numerons
owner confined. The owner of the material body has inmense powers planes of existence, which we mortals cannot comprehend. According
to transform the same into a subtle body. There are self-conscious to the sciptures there are at least seven planes of existence in Bhuloka,
subtle bodies, that our mortal eyes fail to espy. Bhuvaloka, Swarloka, Janaloka, Tapaloka & Satyaloka. And the
Indeed as Krishna told us in the Bhagavad Gita, the subtle bodies very mortals who live on the earth could migrate there. Of course,
like those of the gods and nagas and the siddhas cannot be espied they cannot migrate there with the body they possess just as one cannot
with mortal eyes. Hence Arjuna was bestowed with a third eye with fly in the sputuik in this earthly body. It must in addition don the robes
which he could have glimpse of the infinite. of an astronaut. Siddha hereby indirectly testifies that the owner of the
mortal body can get his body transformed so that he/she can inhabit
Divyam dadami te chaksuh. [B.G. XI 8]
other planes. Be that as it may according to Siddha pious works cannot
The attitude of the greatly accomplished Kashyapa is also note
liberate man from birth & death & rebirth cycle.
worthy
In an autobiographical strain Siddha recollects the odysseus of his
vismitascadbhutam dristva Kasyapastad dvijottamam
being journeying different births & deaths. He had to suck the breasts
of so many mothers. He had died so many times. Thus he was Modern physiology and anatomy study body as a material object,
harrowed with sorrow. Consequently he took shelter in the Brahman. sans life as it were. But the gita looks upon a living creatures as a
He is now a liberated being in human form. He can see all the worlds body, presided over by life. As soon as the being enters into the body,
in this multiverse. He can survey the lives of every being in this world. the whole body is agog with vitality.
He knows that from hence, he will sojourn to Satyatoka. Thereafter Paradoxically enough, a living body becomes aware of the flow of
he will live with the creator for myriads of ages. the phenomenal world through the senses. But it is not aware of life
The recounting of the past lives by the Siddha is truly poetic in its that feeds on the objects of senses
recollections of the emotions in the past. The Siddha speaks of them. srotobhisaivirjanati indriyarthan sarirabhrit
Just as one speaks about one’s dream, as soon as one is awakened taireva na vijanati prananahartasambhavan (AG- II, 24, 25)
from it. Hence Siddha’s speech, transforms this strife-torn real world Ironically enough, the transcendental being lurks there only.
of ours and it seems to be made of the stuff of dream. Thus, there is a distinction between the body in the being or
In response to Kasyapa’s question, Siddha says that the self has to Sarirabhrit and the transcendental being or the Sanatana jiva. The
put on a body only as a consequence of his pious activities. latter must be distinguished from Brahman that condemns the body. It
One has to reap one’s pious activities. When the rewards of the is the Sanatana jiva that goes through different birth & deaths and
pious activities are almost exhausted through their enjoyment one is
dons a fresh body during every new birth. When the transcendental
drawn to evil. At once one acts differently and is driven towards death.
being or the Sanatana jiva gets rid of the body, it has in it the traces
The nearer one’s death is, the feebler one’s intellect becomes; it goes
of activities that it under-went while in the earlier body.
astray. Even though, one knows that certain foods are harmful, he
Accordingly it goes to higher world like heaven or lower worlds
opts for them. Thus the body contracts deadly diseases. The life force
like hell. Since life in hell is bitter, one had better try to perform pious
is conserved in the body, through heat impelled by air. Now this heat
deeds. Once they reap the rewards of their actions on earth in higher
is excited and penetrates through the different joints in the body. Then
world or penalties for their actions on earth, in the lower world, they
the self suffers from pain and seeks to escape from the body. The self
have to be born again. Rebirth in the womb is as much painful as
in the form of life-force finally gets out of the body after a lot of
death.
sufferings.
It is one’s actions only that impel one to have a corresponding
Siddha by the by gives a vivid portrait of the dead body body. Thereby one reaps the earlier actions performed by one-self. If
Sariranca jahatyevam niruchhasanca drisyate
Sa nirusma niruchhaso nisriko hatachetanah
one acts from clean mind, one performs lot of pious deeds. One is like
brahmana samparityakto mrita ityucyate naraih (AG- II, 23, 24) a tree then richly laden with fruits of sweet kernel. On the other hand
if one acts with polluted mind, one commits sin and reaps its
When life gives up the body, the body looks so lifeless indeed. It
consequences.
does not breathe. It has no heat. It has no beauty. It has no
consciousness. In fact, Brahman has condemned it. They call it a dead Purodhaya mano hidam karmanyatma pravartate (AG- III, 3 )
body. In other words the self–or the transcendental being, that is the soul,
has mind before it and acts on the behest of the mind. So mind is very which truth or reality has been distrorted
important. It reminds one of Dhammapada purvakritam karma nityam jantuh prapadyate
Manopubbangama dhamma manochhetta manomaya sarvam tat karanam yena vikritoayamihagatah (AG- III ,23 )
(Dhammapada) The ayam or the it is the reality. It has been distorted. This distortion
It is the mind that is followed by dharma.
has manifested from action or karma.
Once a being is caught in the net of desire, his journey through the This leads us to the important question as to how karma first
wombs begins. emerged. Of course, it emerged from the primordial desire. How did
The transcendental being or the Jiva has a trans-transcendental the first desire come upon the scene?
aspect. There it is Brahman. True that the Brahman-self enters into the Siddha now dwells on how existence came into being.
body impelled by the activities of the Jiva, but it is nvever stained by Brahma is the creator of this world. At the outset he created his
its environment. But ironically enough as soon as Jiva is born to reap own body. Then he created the Pradhan. This Pradhan is the essence
its earlier actions, it gets involved in fresh acts, good or evil. Thus no of all bodies. The world of appearance is pervaded by it. It is the
sooner than its earlier actions are reaped, it has to reap the ksara or transitory world. Transitoriness has its opposite in the eternal
consequences of the present doings. Hence, one had better pursue or all-transcendental. Hence there is the ineffable behind the show of
the path of liberation or moksadharma. existence. It is known as akshara. But there is a truth beyond. Siddha
But instead of dwelling on moksha-dharma. Siddha, digresses names it as Purushottama. The world crowded with finite things and
into Sanatana Dharma or the inmutable rules to be followed by men in beings is a result of the interaction among the three. One who knows
the society. They include kindness, self-control, ceibacy, pursuit for therefore that happiness & misery in this world are monentary & one
knowledge ahimsa & the like. May be these are golden rules for them who greets one’s own misfortunes as the results of one’s own doings
in any society as such. Still as Yudhisthira pointed out in V.G. if ahimsa can cross the infinite sea of the worldly life. Because he will naturally
could be pursued to its extreme, one’s body would be at war with its be indifferent to the world. He will not distinguish one consciousness
objects of desire. That way it would be difficult to survive bodily. So from another. He knows that One Consciousness permeating through
no one decree of the aforesaid Sanatane Dharma, can be carried the existence. His mind will be therefore always eager to get at the
too far. Paramatma or the soul of souls. Such a person will have neither
Perhaps, Siddha, surveying Sanatana dharma in this light, goes attachment to the dos of the Sanatana dharma nor attachment to the
ahead to delineate mokshadharma. A traveller along the road of donts of the same.
moksadharma is a yogin. Siddha observes that the Yogin is superior naiva dharmi na cadharmi purvopacita-hayakah (AG- IV, 7)
to those who follow sanatana dharma. A yogin is always happy in
He never deems himself to be the doer. He has neither ego nor any
every situation. He expiates the works performed by him in the past.
desire. He sees into the hollowness of every desire and plan of action
But he acts in such a way that he does not have any activity of the
or samkalpa. Hence, he gradually becomes calm like the dying fire
present to be reaped in the future.
that has no fuel.
By the way Siddha defines karma as resulting from that through
vihaya sarva sankalpan budhya sarira manasan atahparam pravaksyami yogasastramanuttamam

sanairnirvanamapnoti nirindhana ivanalah (AG- IV, 12) yunjantah siddhamatmanam yatha pasyanti yoginah (A.G- IV, 15)
The very word nirvana is significant here. Even in the B.G. it has Now I will tell you about the lore of yoga where-by the seeker
been used such as in the phrase brahman irvanam. sees the atman or the soul of souls.
On the surface it seems to oppose the Vedic rituals of fire worship. To perceive the reality, one directs one’s mind inward. His senses
There fire is symbolic of the representative of gods. On the other hand are drawn away from the world without. Their owner mind will be
when the phrase nirvana is used to describe the Summum bonum of drawn to the Reality or the Soul. Thereby one will be in unison with
man, fire is a metaphor for desires. This metephor recurs in such slokas the all transcendant soul and one can perceive it at heart. At once he is
as as it were awakened from dream. He finds the reality all about in the
na jatu kamah kamanam upabhogena samyati world within & world without. He however does not forget the dis-
havisa Krisnavartmeva bhuyah evabhivardhate tinction of the two levels of the existence in appearance & reality. He
The received interpretation of Buddhism debunks fireworship and knows how to distinguish the all-transcendant soul from the empirical
lauds nirvana. Hence the scholars might find the impact of Buddhism world just as one can distinguish the corn form the plant.
in the Mahabharata and especially in the gitas. But we are afraid, that isikanca yatha munjat Kascinnikrisya darsayet. ( A.G.- IV, 24 )
such an opinion is wide off the truth. Just as language itself is always Once, the mind is dissolved in the soul of souls, one can don and
ambiguous so are all things under the sun. From which angle of view doff any body at will.
do we look upon it is the point. The Vedic tradition had this eclecticism When Vasudeva introduced us with the speaker Siddha he told us
inherent in it. The Buddhist tradition, that originated from the Vedic that Siddha could assume any body whatever at will and could move
tradition only, may be through the negation of the Vedas in a way, has about like the wind whenever he desired.
only acknowledged only one aspect of fire. Buddhism thus, did not The speech of Sidhha now tells how one could be like him. Thus
originate the imagery of nirvana. It was a shared sign among the poets, Siddha’s speech seems to come full circle.
thinkers and philosopher of ancient India during the Buddha’s period True that Siddha observes earlier that the seeker knows how to
and the epic age. distinguish the body from the soul just as one distinguishes the corn
Presently Siddha dwells on yoga with the aid of which those who from the plant. But Siddha further adds that one who realises the soul
journey along mokshadharma get a first hand experience of the reality begins to look upon his teeth & tongue, that is the different limbs of
or the soul or atman. The word atman has been differently used in the body also as the soul. Thus when the realisation dawns, there is no
different contexts in the gitas & in the BH.G. also. It might mean the difference between the transitional & the eternal, though difference
transcendental soul of a body or else it might mean the all transcendant does very much exist on the empirical plane.
soul of the existence. The latter transcends the individual souls too. Having quoted the conversation between Siddha & Kashyapa,
Now Siddha speaks of how one could unite with the all-transcendant Vasudeva comments that the road along the aforesaid moksadharma
reality. Yoga means the union of the individual self of the seeker with is open to all
the all- transcendant self. Idam dharmam samasthaya yepi syuh papayonayah
striyo vaisyastatha sudrastepi yanti param gatim. (A.G- IV, 61) the self. The self-in-the-self defies all dichotomy. There burns the fire
In other words, social hierarchy or the caste-system never stands drunken with soma. This is a powerful image. The Brahmin is supposed
in the way of liberation. to observe. Vedic rites. May be, the wife complained because he is
Vasudeva next, quotes the Brahmana Gita. The Brahmana Gita is no longer performing the Vedic rites which is his duty as laid down by
the exalted speech of a Brahmin addressed to his wife. This is also a the laws of Varnashrama. And the Brahmin has a story to tell in
subset of Anu-Gita. response to her complaint. Earlier he used to observe the rituals. But
The Brahman Gita opens in a very down to the earth way. The the ogres, simply put the rituals in disarray. This is a recurrent motif in
wife of a Brahmin finds her husband lazy and inactive. Hence she tells the epics and the puranas. Risi Viswamitra went to King Dasaratha’s
him. Court for help so that the ogres could be kept away from the site of
Where could I go depending on a husband like you? I am placed sacrifice. Here the ogres simply made mesh of the sacrificial rites of
with one who has set aside all activity and who has neither foresight the Brahmin. Since then the Brahmin stopped offering oblations to the
nor alertness. fire. But as soon as the sacrificial rites ceased in the world without, to
Kamnu lokam gamisyami tvamaham patimasritya his great awe the Brahmin found the sacrificial fire burning ceaselessly
nyasta Karmanamasinam Kinasa vicaksanam. (Br. G- I, 3) within at heart. It was aburning with somarasa where the Brahman is.
It is a wonderful vignette of a family life of traditional India where This is a note on the vedic rituals indeed. To put some logs on fire
the wife depends on her husband for leading her to success in life here fed by molten butter is sacrificial rite indeed in the world without. But
and in life hereafter. it makes no sense unless it is done in the light of the meaning of the
The Brahmin’s exalted speech follows his wife’s complaint. He sacrificial rite. This is ritual or work sans any import. Mere adding fire
laughingly retorts saying that in-action is not possible in this world. to logs is not sacrificial rite just as a wild-fire is not a sacrificial rite. But
once the sacrificial rite is put in disarray, it becomes a blessing to the
naiskarmyam na ca lokesmin muhurtamapi labhyate (Br. G- I,7)
seeker. The sacrificial rite is already internalised within him. In other
But action, divorced from wisdom, breeds illusion only
words work should be performed with right knowledge. It must not
mohomeva niyachhanti karmana jnanavarjita
be done mechanically. In that case, the work or the ritual sacrifice will
Actually we are born over and overagain and pass through different
be internalised. Consequently it will be ceaselessly performed at heart.
images of bodies due to Karma or activity only.
Hence, although the wife does not find her husband observing Vedic
rakshobhi vardhamanesu drisya dravyesu vartmasu
rituals, it is always being observed by the Brahmin at heart. That is
atmasthamatmana tebhyo dristamayatanan maya
yatra tad brahma nirdvandam yatra somah sahagnina why the Brahmin told her earlier.
vyavayam kurute nityam dhiro bhutani dharayan grahyam satyam va yadidam karma vidyate
yatra brahmadayo yuktastadaksharamupasate etadeva vyavasyanti karma karmeti karminah ( Br.G- I, 6 )
vidvamsah subrata yatra santatmano jitendriyah (Br. G -I 9-11) The internalisation of the ritual is not, however, opposed to rituals
The Brahmin says that when the ogres, destroyed the fire place as such. Actually rituals in the physical world have to be observed as
where he used to pay his oblation, all of a sudden he found the self in long as it is not internalised. When the ritual is internalised, there is no
need of observing rites in the physical world. gitas have been either told by men who either went through life &
It is this internalisation of rituals indeed, that opened up the world death questions. Or else they have been addressed to men who are
of Tantras which looks upon physical body itself as the site for worship. face to face with crisis. Vritra Gita has been told to the fallen angel
It says Vritra. Harita Gita has been told by Harita whose wife is a shrew and
The heart should be the throne so on.
of the deity True that enlightenment does not care how one gets there. Still it
The air in the body should seems that it is often the blow to the heart given us by some one’s
fan it
treachery, some one’s unexpected death, some one’s chance remarks
The sound vibration in the body
itself should ring the bell or cruel behaviour. A defeat in war, a failure in worldly life, could
The nectar fallen from instantly transport one to the plane where we could hear the music or
the thousand-petalled lotus the gita of enlightenment. Was it for this that Tilopa gave a slap in the
should wash its feet. face of Naropa? It transported Naropa to the plane of enlightenment.
& so on. The Zen masters often beat their disciples to enlightenment.
Hritpadmam asanam dadyat vayu tattvanca camaram etc. Life on planet Earth is threatened from multiple directions. Any
Thus contrary to many a scholar. Tantra seems to have directly moment, nuclear, biological or chemical warfare can break out.
leaped from the Vedic rites. The Brahman Gita in fact explicates the Pollution of the land air and sea slow-poisons us ceaselessly. Resources
Bhagawad Gita in its laksana The Brahman finds the fire alight with like top-soil, water or ozone layer are being damaged once for all.
somarasa, at his heart. This image is very significant. On the surface They are not renewable. Over- population endangers the biosphere.
Vedic rites imply lighting up of fire where Somarasa is poured. A And of course they are all our own doings. There is a crisis of
number of scholars look upon soma-rasa as a kind of herbal juice consciousness. One wonders whether the gitas of yore could revive
which has narcotic effect. On the surface gods like Indra are very us to enlightenment at such a crucial moment. Does not a crucial failure
fond of it and become high. But when the Brahmin finds soma at his open the door before enlightened speech?
own heart he understands the Vedic rituals in a different light. It is yada yadaha dharmasya glanirbhavati bharata.
either a nectar aheady in the body or the worshipper’s devotion. Heart assured the highest voice in the world.
is indeed a cup from which the gods love to drink the soma of our Now the Brahmin in his enlightenment encounters the reality or the
devotion. immutable Brahman. What could Brahman be like? Well it cannot be
But the above imagery could be read in a different way as well. comprehended with our senses. Life force in a living body springs
The ogres might stand for anti-social elements. The site for rituals that from It. Life foree could be understood in terms of the five kinds of
they ransacked could be the place of economic activity ransacked by air. Prana and apana wander about in the space between Samana
the antisocials. A modern mind might read lock-outs and closures of and Vyana in a living body. Once Prana and apana disappear Samana
factory in the story of ransacking the site for rituals. and Vyana also vanish. Udana is the fifth type of air which functions
No wonder that the Brahmin faces a crisis thereby. Most of the as the receptacle of all the other air.
And the Vaisvanara fire is alight there. Vaisvanara has seven tongues karma brahmodbhavam viddhi brhamaksara samudbhavah
of flame in the nose, tongue, eyes, skin, hearing, mind and intelligence. tasmat sarvagatam brahma nityam yajne pratisthitam
The objects of the seven senses function as the fuel for the Vaisvanara. (B.G -III ,14 15 )
Who conducts the fire-sacrifice? One who smells, one who sees, one We moderns look upon nature as the other—external to man. But
who tastes, one who hears, one who touches, one who thinks and the Vedas, the Mahabharata and in short Vedic & Puranic literature,
one who understands are the ones who conducts the sacrifice. These find the very performance of sacrifice that is ceaselessly being done in
seven priests thus offer oblations of the objects of the world of eye nature is equally being done in humans in which body & mind and
and ear into the seven flames. The fire transports them once again to intellect participate. Since body, mind and intellect are also material
the seven fountain heads or yonis from which the seven objects of they are also oblations to the cosmic sacrifice pervading the Universe.
love of the seven flames, are renewed. Hence the knower, the object of knowledge and knowledge all three
When destruction comes all of them remain pent up-in their wombs are being always sacrificed in the fire, where Brahman is.
or Yonis. When creation begins anew they are born again one after We moderns do not understand this underlying truth permeating
another smell, taste, forms, touch, sound doubts and curiosity. through the opposites—mind & nature. Hence we are out to destroy
The knower, the object of knowledge and knowledge are always nature and thereby we foolishly destroy ourselves.
being offered in the fire throughtout the existence. They are full of The Brahmin further dwells on the theme of sacrifice in the body
untold energy. Thus the imagery of the fire sacrifice has been decoded and interprets it from fresh stand point. This is physiology Mahabharata
by the Brahmin on n levels. style. The ten senses viz. the five senses of perception jnanendrya and
As such a Brahmin lights up the fire, at a place on earth-earmarked the five senses that work karmendrya conduct the sacrifice. The ac-
for sacrifice. Wood becomes its fuel. Somrasa is offered to it. tivities of these ten senses are the ghee poured in the fire. The fire is
The Brahmin points out that the ritual, actually reenacts the process also of ten kinds. They are the ten Vedic Gods, in Direction, Air, Sun,
of creation and destruction that is the wide wonderful phenomenal Moon, Earth, Fire, Visnu, Indra, Prajapati and Mitra. Thus the
world. Mahabharata interprets the Vedic gods as types of energies who live
The Vedas address the Fire God and says Thou art spread all over in our body only. The body is the living temple of gods indeed. What
the existence is the utensil of this sacrifice? The body has in it chitta; which func-
viswatah paribhurasi tions as the utensil. The sacrificial fire bestows wealth. What is the
Indeed everywhere there is combustion. The different objects of wealth leaping forth from this sacrifice? It’s knowledge.
the senses are being burnt in it and go back to their sources only to be Chitta is a technical term. It should be distinguished from individual
renewed into fresh life. mind. The Brahmin says.
This recycling in Nature has been dileneated in the BG as well of Everything whatever is chitta; knowledge makes it manifest. In
course, through the medium of a different imagery. other words, there would be no world if there were no knowledge of
annad bhavanti bhutani parjanyad annasambhavah it.
yajnad bhavati parjanyo yajnah karma samudbhavah A modern mind, might feel uneasy to understand chitta. Because,
according to modern science there are individual minds only, locked the same sacrificial rite, has been interpreted on different levels by the
up in the living bodies. The mind vanishes when the bodies die. But Brahmin. Any ritual is as such language by the by.
chitta is transpersonal mind which is the animate and the inanimate Those who argue that if there were no world of objects and if there
world. This contradicts modern physics because, modern physics were no mind to comprehend it, there would be no language to
approves of the existence of mind in individual living being only of the describe them, are countered by the Brahmin in a different way. He
higher species in the kingdom of life. tells us a story.
Commonly as per Vedic rituals, there should be two fires one in Once upon a time both Mind and Speech went to the Soul of the
the household garhapatya and another at the ground for ritual before World bhutatma to know who is superior. The Soul of the World
the public ahavaniya. The Brahmin observes that the latter is the said—Both matter and mind are my mind. The senses of living being
mind. The former on the other hand is the self which lies at a deeper can know the material aspect of my mind. On the other hand, the
layer than mind. Thus the Mahabharata distinguished the surface mind mind which baffles senses is comprehended by Speech. So speech
from the self that lie deeper than that. according to the World-Soul is superior to individual mind.
The oblations are poured into the deeper mind or self. Therefrom Let us, ponder over what the World Soul says. It posits that the
speech leaps forth. The mind observes it. world soul has a mind which could be called world-mind. World mind
The Brahmani–the wife of the Brahman–the addressee interprets has two aspects in the physical and the mental. The individual mind
this image as suggesting that speech emerges before mind manifests. can know the physical through its senses. But speech knows the supra-
This is apparent from the question— sensual. How can speech know the suprasensual unless speech creates
Kasmad vagabhavat purvam kasmad manobhavat the same for the mind to comprehend. Since signifiers are never
Manasa cintitam vakyam yada samabhipadyate ( Br. G- II ,10 ) organically related to the signified, speech is always ambiguous capable
But they say that speech was born after mind. of meaning on different levels. In other words, the speech about the
This is a revolutionary statement indeed. On the surface, language suprasensual never gives us the glimpse of the supra-sensual if any. It
is a vehicle for ideas which leaps from the mind. But can we ever have leads us to its opposite—the silence.
ideas without language? So language comes first and ideas next. So yato vaco nivartante
the mind has been created by the language itself. The Brahmin observes that speech leaps forth from the zest for life
This is modern linguistics first held out by the structuralists. It is or Prana. Prana is the air that we inhale to live. Inhalation and its
curious to note that these truths were discovered quite early in the opposite exhalation go together. So Prana or inhalation implies
annals of man to remain suspended from functioning for a millenium or exhalation or Apana. Zest for life or what Freud calls libido is the
so, only to be revived in the late years of the twentieth century. result of the tension between the two. Hence the Brahman observes
Taking the cue from it, are we not safe in arguing that, the worldview that speech always sits at the meeting ground of Prana & Apana,
of the gitas and thereby the Mahabharata is created by language only. birth and death. This is a wonderful explanation of how the speech-
Language is at bottom ambiguous since the relationship between act emerges. There are already different speculations as to the origin
the signifier and signified of a word is basically arbitrary. That is why of language. Brahmin here gives us a unique explanation of how
speech-act originated, which is nowhere found in modern speculations globe. More than hundred names for this mysterious X energy were in
on the origin of language. Taking the cue from the Brahmin, we can vogue. The Chinese people called it chi (Ki in Japanese), the
take speech-act as a biological activity that started with sounds shaped Polynesians call it mana, the Sufis call it baraka. It is yesod in Jewish
by spontaneous exclamations. The Brahmin further adds that with cabalistic tradition and Holy Ghost in Christianity.
apana, or the air leaving the body, man’s speech becomes debilitated. Thus the Brahmin, dwelled on how the whole universe is sustained
Hence Prana comes to the body with gusto to rescue speech. When by sacrifice & how man is created & sustained by sacrifice. All our
the Prana is in its full gusto, when the excitement is high, no wonder activities are but unknowingly impelled by an act of sacrifice, being
speech falters and there is the silence. performed as it were on its own.
tasmad uchasam asadya na vag vadati karhicit (Br.G.-II, 20) Since the five airs that help maintain the life which one of them
The Brahmin distinguishes between two types of speech acts in appears earlier in a body? The Brahmin himself poses this question &
speech and its antonym silence. Silence with the Brahmin is a kind of quotes what Narada told risi Devamata in this context. Thus we could
speech. And of course with him silence is gold. say Narada Gita follows.
Narada says that the dialectics/conflict inherent in the prana or life-
ghosini jatanirghosa nityameva pravartate
tayorapi ghosinya nirghosameva gariyasi (Br.G.- II, 21) sustaining air manifests itself at the outset.
Our science posits that the zygote forms in the womb at the outset.
Speech express itself through noise as well as through silence.
After some time life appears in it. But Narada observes that life-force
Between the two, silence is nobles. According to the Brahmin while
operates prior to that or else, the zygote could not be formed.
speech dwells on the mundane, silence speaks of the supramundane.
This throws light on the vitalistic interpretation of life as opposed to
And the Brahmin categorically asserts that speech is prior to mind
the conventional approach to life conducted by science. While science
tatah samane pratitisthatiha
says that the body appears first & the mind thereafter, one wonders
ityeva purvam prajajalpa vami
whether there could be any body sans mind. So mind appears before
tasmat manah sthavaratvam visistham. ( Br.G- II, 28 )
the body. And could there be a mind if life were not there. So life or
Modern psychologists like Lacan are also of opinion that it was
prana appears first, and the mind follows it. Mind is in turn followed
language that created the mind.
by body. Well this could be testified by our approach to the dead-
Next the Brahmin points out the superiority of life or prana to
body. A dead-body is a dead-body & not the body. We do not hug it.
mind and other senses. Because true there are many divisions of life.
We do not kiss it. On the contrary we shudder from the same.
But they are at bottom the same although each division as separate
bharya vibhyati tasmin kaye
eutity functions to accomplish a particular task and surely no one of
Even the wife shudders from it. All our physiology and anatomy
them is superior to another.
looks upon the body as a machine and describes the functions of its
Science recognises four basic energies in electro-magnetism, gravity,
constituents, as if the latter were life-less machine- parts. But unlike, a
the weak & strong nuclear forces. Prana or life force is the fifth energy.
machine the body can heal itself on its own. A living body should
Physics is not yet aware of it.
therefore be read from holistic point of view. The five pranas or the
The prana or life force was self evident to the ancient all over the
airs that sustain the body are the five priests who pour oblations into have their objects. When one enjoys it, one commits sacrilege. But
the fire which burns where prana and apana or day & night meet. when one accepts the same just as a god does, it is a sacrifice. Even if
ahoratramidam dvandvam tayormadhye hutasanah (Br.G -V,14) one takes poisonous food and accepts it as a god does, there will be
no harm. The same idea recurs in the BH.G. also. It says,
This is the fire indeed which is externalised in the ritual. One
apuryamanamacala pratistham samudramapah pravisanti yadvat
might ask, how could there be different significances of the tadvat kama yam pravisanti sarve sa santimapnroti na kamakami
same fire-rite. The wife of the Brahman, the addressee herself
( BH.G- II, 70 )
asked earlier.
Let objects of desire flow into one the way the rivers pour into the
Svabhavat saptahotara iti me purvika mati
seas. The sea does not ask for them, nor refuses them. Similarly the
yatha vai panca hotara paro bhavastaducyatam ( Br.G-IV, 3)
man who has attained peace neither asks for the objects of senses nor
She asks, you said earlier that there are seven priests. Right now, denies them.
how is it that you speak of five priests. This shows that rituals are like One might ask why the enjoyment of the sense-objects does not
languages capable of meaning on many levels & their meanings are pollute the peaceful man? Because, the latter accepts the gifts just as
perhaps never exhaustive. the sea does according to Bhagavat Gita or just as the gods do
What is the fire like that burns at the place where the prana and according to the Brahman Gita.
udana the two airs meet. Narada says fire stands between sat and In other words, what we do is not the point, how we do is the
asat. Sat means that which exists. Asat means that which does not point. One might enjoy whatever comes in his way, sanctioned or not
exist. The fire is therefore neither sat nor asat neither not-sat nor not- by the society. But if he accepts the same as gods do, no sin touches
asat neither not-not-sat nor not-not asat. It can not be comprehended him. The Bhagavat Gita says,
by mind because mind can only recognise the jada or fragments. This
bhunjate te tvagham papah ye pacantyatmakaranat (BH.G- III, 3)
could be suggested by vak or speech only that could dwell on the
Those who cook for themselves, eat sin. On the other hand.
jangama or the supra-sensual. But words become silent when there
is surplus of vitality in the body. Well, speech as it has been already yajnasistasinah santo mucyante sarva-kilvisaih (BH.G- III, 3)
posited is of two types in loud and silent. It is this silence where the Those who live on whatever is left after a sacrificial rite is
poetry of the Brahmana–gita reaches us. liberated from every sin.
Brahmana, further explains the fire sacrifice from another angle. The Brahmana Gita points out that once we offer our food in the
There are four priests in—the instrument for the sacrifice, the act of fire of the life it is a sacrificial rite.
sacrifice, the doer of sacrife and salvation. The three gunas in sattva Thus two men could do the same thing. Sin or purity does not lie in
raja and tamas are the instruments of sacrifice. The BH.G. has dwelled the act itself. Everything depends on the motive behind the action.
elaboratery on the different kinds of sacrifice. A sacrifice is different This further points out that not only language, but the world of eye
due to the fact that one or another guna is more pronounced in it. and ear is also capable of meaning on many levels. The same act of
How is the sacrifice performed in the body thereby? Well the senses, eating might be a sin. It might be a sacrifice also.
The Brahmin further observes that Narayana Vishnu is the presid- So each one of the different entities is Om. That is, the same Brahman
ing deity of every sacrifice. Earlier, they sacrified the senses at the or infinitude is read on many levels.
altar. The beasts earmarked for sacrifice were but the signifiers of the Om is a signifier without any signified. Or else infinite are its signi-
senses only. fied.
The Brahmin further observes that there is only one ruler in this One who lives in this awareness of the infinite leads the life of a
existence. He is the trans-trans-personal entity. He lives in every heart. Brahmachari according to the Brahmin. The Brahmachari is one who
It is he who is our friend. It is he who is our enemy. He is good. He is lives in Brahman or the infinite. Though living in this world of differ-
evil. The Brahmin says that he does not act on his own. He just flows ences he knows that this is full and that is full.
like water going down. He cannot help it. purnamadah purnamidam
In Bhagavat Gita Krishna said that the whole world turns on his Thus the Brahmin does not approve of puritanism. Restraint of
wheel. senses or celibacy is not always the road to the realisation of the real
yantrarudhani mayaya or the infinite.
And he exhorts Arjuna to become nothing more than a means in The Brahmin observes that he has already entered into the great
the hands of God. forest having crossed a whole lot of hurdles.
The Brahmin knows the truth. He has completely surrendered him- Sankalpadamsamasakam sokaharsahimatapam
self to that trans-trans-personal being. He is a mere means in the latter’s mohandhakaratimira lobhavyadhi vinasinim
hands. visayaikatyayadhvanim kamakrodha virodhakam
Once gods and the snakes went to the Creator for listening to his tadatitya mahadurgam pravistosmi mahadvanam (Br.G- VIII,1,2)
sermons. The creator told them only one word, Om which is a mono- He has got rid of motives & intentions that are the mosquitoes. He
syllable and signifies Brahman or the Infinite. Naturally Om meant has transcended the summer & winter of joy & sorrow. He has come
many things to many people. The snakes understood Om in their own past the deep darkness of illusion. He escaped the bites of the ser-
way and thought that the creator exhorted them to bite others. pents of greed. He has brooked the opposition of lust & anger, only
This parable is very significant. It suggests that no text (the whole to reach the forest.
existence is a text for us to read) has a definite meaning. There are as The Upanisad pointed out that the poets & the wise men opine
many texts in the same text as there are readers Where is the text? that the road to liberation is as a sharp as razor’s edge. It is difficult to
The text is not there without. The reader reads his own mind in the pass through.
text. The text is what we half perceive and half create. This is why Ksurasya dhara nisita duratyaya durgam pathastvat
Abhinavagupta pointed out that the right reader would commune with kavayorvadanti
God while reading a text. Here is the Kavi who gives us a vivid description of the danger-
This is not all. ridden road. The whole journey reads like a passage from romance.
omitye—kaksara brahma But while in the Middle Age romances in Europe we find erotic love at
Om is the infinite. The infinite is all the differences in the existence. the destination often symbolised by a rose as in the famous Romance
of the Rose, here, the journeyman, comes past the hedges of lust & priest should observe the rituals of sacrifice in the light of this
love and reaches the vast forest. indestructible or aksara. This is the legitimation of the Bhagavad Gita
Is not the forest lorn with hungry beasts and poisonous snakes? also. The Bhagavad G.ita says that one who sees Krishna in everything
Are not the mosquitoes more frequent in the forest itself than in the and everything in Krishna can do whatsoever he chooses. No. sin
road. touches him. The Brahmin also leads his life in this world the self-same
Yes, there are beasts but no hungry ones. There are snakes. But way. This however gives a reply to the thesis of Vichakhnu Gita.
they do not bite. There could be mosquitoes. But they do not hurt. The Brahmin now dwells on how one could set out for such a state
tatravisya socanti na prahrsyanti ca dvija or for the forest. To that end he dwells on the story of Parasuram &
na ca vibhyati kesancit tebhyo vibhyate kevala (Br.G-VII, 6) Arjuna. If the earlier story of journeying for the forests could be
This is the vision of a world beyond sorrow & happiness. Here compared with romances, here is a story which is heroic in essence. It
everything of the world exists sans their grossness. This is a forest opens with Kartavihjyarjuna hungering for war. He ravaged the sea in
where bliss and fearlessness reign supreme. May be the forest is the quest of a match for his heroics. The sea being forced directs him to
archetype of Eden where the first parents of man according to the Parasuram. He at once goes to Parsuram & angers the latter. In a
Bible, lived. The Brahmin dwells on the forest in all details. The point- rage Parasuram not only kills Arjuna, but also may—hems the
edness of his description reminds one of Pre-Raphelite poetry. The Kshatryas or the warrior class for twenty one times to avenge his
Brahmin, however, points out that the forest is here on earth only. The father’s death. This story of blood and horror likens the revenge dramas
same world strife-torn and beast-lorn could be the forest, provided of Seneca & of the Elizabethan period. The dead fathers of Parasuram
the pilgrim journeys inward and crosses the barriers of motive & in- now intervene. But Parasurama is not yet calm. So they tell him the
tention, hindrances of lust & hunger & so on. Only the wise know of story of Alarka of ancient times. The same Alarka figures in
it. May be the vanaprastha is setting out for this vana or forest. Markandeya Purana also.
The Brahmin observes that he being the denizen of this vast forest, Alarka conquered the world. But to his utter dismay he found that
participates in the worldly life and yet he does not partake of its fruits. although he was the master of the world, he was not the master of
He takes the smell & he does not take it. How is that? himself. This directed him inward. But the arrows & swords that kill
The Brahmin quotes a dialogue between a priest who observes the enemies in the external world are of no avail. The senses themselves
fire sacrifice and a saint. The saint pointedly observes that the ritual of spoke to Alarka telling him about the futility of warring with them with
fire sacrifice is self contradictory. On one side it is being said that fire- conventional weapons. So Alarka plunged into penance in search of
sacrifice is ‘adhvara’ or an instance of ahimsa or non-violence. And the weapon capable of conquering the senses. When he went deeper
still animals are sacrified at its altar. The priest in retort says that even into meditation & when mind became calm, the senses were conquered
the most non-violent man cannot live without killing others. The saint indeed. Thus a single arrow of meditation could conquer the senses
says that this is true. Actually the reality has two aspects; one is subject which all the arms of a king’s arsenal cannot conquer. This goaded
to decay & death or Ksara, another is deathless aksara One who Parasuram to penance.
lives in the light of the deathless commit no sin. In other words the Earlier the Brahmana told us about the hurdles on the road to
realisation. Now he reduced them to three basic gunas. All the hurdless maya vyaptamidam sarvam yat kinicit jagatigatam. (Br.G- XIV, 2)
are their manifestations. The Brahmana observes that all these three This reminds one of Krishna’s speech in the B.H- Gita.
gunas must be over-come. The Bhagavad Gita also says : Avajananti mam mudha...etc.
traigunya visaya veda nistraigunya bhavarjuna (B.G- II, 45) Or else.
The Brahmana describes how the gunas overcome us through de- Brahmin states that such a state could be attained through com-
sire. The pilgrim must observe their manifestations and thereby get rid munion with the cosmic intelligence.
of them. Just as during the conversation between Janaka and the Brahmin it
The Bhagavad Gita dwells on these three gunas especially in the was found out that the Brahmin was death in disguise, so do we find in
Gunatraya-Vibhagaygo. The notion of me & mine stand in the way course of the conversation between Krishna and Arjuna that the Brah-
of the conquest of the three gunas. The Brahman tells us about an min is the intellect and his wife is the mind or field or body where the
interesting debate between a brahmin & the king Janaka that explores knower is Krishna himself. In other words Krishna has externalised a
the notion of me & mine. The king says that on one level he owns conversation between his intellect and mind to exhort Arjuna.
nothing. Even his body is not his. On another level, since he does not But this gives us a clue to an aesthetics. Any character or action as
desire anything for his own sake, he feels that he is the monarch of depicted in a narrative is the externalisation of the author’s mind. So,
everything that he surveys. a psychological interpretation of a work of art is always relevant. By
This speech is singularly significant. Because it explicates the ear- way of analysing the gita are we not trying to unravel the mind of
lier speech of Janaka in the Bodhya Gita. Vedavyasa, the author therefore?
My riches are endless
Yet I do not own anything worthy of name
If the whole of Mithila is aflame
I will not lose a single copper.
Ironically enough the brahmin who led the king to realise such truths
in course of the Socratic manner of discourse was Death in disguise.
When Janaka finds it out he exclaims :
Now I understand, Death, you are the pilot of the cycle named the
attainment of the infinite or Brahman. Sattvaguna forges its spoke.
The Brahmin now adds that he himself is like death or fire
ye Kechijjantavo loke jangamah sthavarasca ha
tesam mamantakam viddhi darunamiva pavaka (Br.G- XIV, 3)
Because everything in this existence is in him. I am not what I ap-
pear to be.
nahamasmi yatha mam tvam pasyase ca subhasubhe
CHAPTER - XI told a few enquiring sages of yore.

The creator Brahma pointed out that be it inert matter or conscious
ANU GITA II life, everything has sprung from the Truth. Thus the unmanifest seed of
the plant mentioned earlier is surely the truth. And the myriads of things
The Brahmana Gita quoted by Krishna, spurred the curiosity in in the world of eye & ear, be it living or inert live through penance
Arjuna to know the Infinite or Brahman since the infinite or Brahman indeed. Any act whatever is a kind of penance. And every thing inert
is all that one needs to know. or alive maintains its uniqueness through action or penance. And of
In reply Vasudeva Krishna again refers to a dialogue between a course through action or penance one is different from another and
preceptor & a disciple on the same issue. The preceptor points out the same truth turns into differences that constitute this world.
that knowledge is all in all and renunciation is the best kind of penance This necessarily means that the more we act, the more we move
to that end. away from our true self or the truth from where we come.
gnanam tveva param vidmah But we cannot stop work. Since there are four stages in human
sannyasam tapa uttamam. (A.G- V, 16) life, there are four institutions for each stage in Brahmacharyya etc.
What to know? Well the structure of this existence is all that one The fourth institution sanyasa or renunciation is the road to freedom.
must know. The existence is like a tree. Its seed is unmanifest avyakta It is this stage where the knowledge of the spirit dawns. Unless this
From there the trunk of intellect springs. And the whole tree is knowledge is there no one can understand the real import of ths skies
permeated by Ego or Ahamkara. The senses are holes in it. The five and the wind and the light and the deities.
constituents of the world in earth, air, fire and water are its branches. Curiously enough while other gitas have pointed out that the right
And the tree is always laden with flowers that bear lovely fruits. to renunciation is universal, irrespective of caste and creed, the fourth
This tree recurs in the Bhagavad Gita. There it is described as stage of life according to the creator is ordained only for the upper
inverted with roots up in Brahman and the trunk and branches & three castes.
leaves constituting the world. vanaprastham trijatinam
In the Anugita our world laden with weal & woe however has trayanamupadisyate (A.G- V, 43)
been represented as the tree, where every flower will bear great fruit. One need not find any conflict here with the exhortations of the
Thus, seen from a detachment sorrows are also lovely flowers bearing other gitas. Perhaps while renunciation is a must for the upper three
lovely fruits indeed castes, the same is optional for the rest.
Sadarpanah sadapuspah Sada subhophalodayah (A.G- V, 21) Why is not the same law prescribed for every body? Because
In other words the preceptor here tells us that sufferings whatever there are differences between man and man. Well the difference is not
in the world are mere appearances. They are sweet in their kernel. there between man and man only. It is everywhere in the existence.
And still, the preceptor says that one recognises the tree and fells it. The existence has come into being through differences manifest from
Thereby one conquers death and escapes death & rebirth cycle. the same non-manifest truth. At bottom, these differences are due to
To explicate his speech, the preceptor quotes what the creator the difference in the proportion of the three gunas in the different
Anu Gita II 107 108 ... A Study of the GITAS in the Mahabharata
constituents of the existence. There is tamas. It is pronounced in the manifestations. The creator’s description of the urdhasrota recurs in
inert masse. Also there are men who are greatly influenced by tamas. the teachings of Bhagavan Buddha also.
They are reluctant to give up. No wonder, that they are not fit for The creator, however, observes that these gunas are not separate
renunciation. One cannot ride an unwilling horse. from each other. The existence of any one of them implies the existence
But the creator himself says that exceptions are there. Even men of the other two. They are a continuum.
with a priori tendency can transcend limitation. They must reap the avichhhinnani drisyante
results of their unholy deeds. Once they are exhausted, they can have rajah-sattvam-tamastatha. (A.G.- IXI )
more of sattva guna. They might excel a Brahmin also. Often men One wonders what is the source of three gunas? Well the creator
are born in lower class to reap their earlier actions. Once it is over, if observes that it was the great soul mahanatma from which all the
one is cautious, one might attain higher castes or varnas. gunas sprang. The Great Soul has its synomyms in
This reminds one of the career of king Harish Chandra. He expiated
mahanatma matirvisnuh
his actions by becoming a scavenger. Presently after, he was alight jisnuh sambhusca viryavan
with spiritual light. vuddhih prajnopalabdhisca
The 2nd guna is rajas.Unlike the men of tamas quality, men with tatha khyatidhritih smritih
pronounced rajas are always active. But if their activities are directed It is the intellect, referred to earlier.
towards more & more pleasure they degenerate. He who is aware of The creator describes this mahat with telling imagery.
the tendencies of the rajas can transcend them. sarvatah panipadam sarvato—ksisiromukham
The third quality is sattva. One who has more Sattva is free from sarvatah sruti malloke sarvam vyapya sa tisthati.
greed & hatred. He knows that knowledge is futile profession is futile, His hands and legs are everywhere.
His eyes and ears are everywhere.
service futile, labour is futile.
mudha jnanam mudha vrittam This is the mysterium tremendum before which we are awe-struck
mudha seva mudha sramah (A.G- VIII, 4 ) and tongue-tied.
Once we are aware of this Panopticon, we know that we can do
This is however not nihilism. While tamas is averse to work and
nothing without being noticed. And our life style changes.
rajas is vibrant with activity, sattva knows that all work is futile.
Of course this mahat is in every heart. From mahat sprang the
Because the latter does not want to have anything worldly. Quite
Ego. It was from the Ego indeed that the five elements in earth, air,
naturally the sattvika flow upward away from the mundane world
etc. showed up. Every living being is always linked with them and
and curiously enough they attain super-natural powers with which they
their respective qualities like smell & sound. This ego is of three types
could enjoy the pleasures of the world and nature.
in tamasika rajasika sattvika. The first one creates the five elements.
The creator says, one who knows these characteristics of sattva
The Second creates the senses. The third one creates the senses that
might enjoy its fruits at will but he is never carried away by these super
work viz. Karmendrya & the fire that constitute the life-force.
natural powers.
The senses that spring from the Ego are twelve in ear, eye, skin,
Thus the creator has delineated on the three gunas and their
nose, tongue, legs, hands, speech, anus, sex organ, mind and intellect. aware of that premise.
We perceive with the aid of the five of them. So they are the senses What benefit will spring from such knowledge? In our society one
with which we perceive jnanendrya — The next five help us to work. could be a physicist or a doctor or an engineer and earn lot of money,
They are the senses that aid us to work hence karmendrya. as the consequence of his studies. But the Mahabharata through the
The creator next dwells on the relationship between human body lips of Brahma says that once one is aware of the truths of sciences,
and the world of matter by showing how the same thing exists on one would be aware of the impermance of everything physical or
three levels vix. adhibhautik, adhidaivik and adhyatmik and also mundane.
indicating their corresponding deties. They will no longer be engrossed with the pleasures & their minds
adhidevata adhyatmik will wane.
Presiding adhibhautik adhidaivik Spiritual or Ksine manasi sarvasmin
Deities Physical Level Abstract level human level na-janmasukhamisyate (A.G -XII, 42)
Dik or Space Sky sound ear
True that desire burns in every heart. And still the creator observes
Lightning Air touch skin
Sun Fire form eye that indifference to worldly things also lurks in every heart. It may be
Moon Water taste tongue very much pronounced in some and faintly visible in others.
Wind Earth smell nose nivrittim sarvabhutesu
mriduna darunena ca (A.G- XII, 43 )
All these elements exist in either earth or water or sky. These
elements manifest in four kinds of life. Knowledge of science will focus on the one indeterminate behind
Kind I Hatches from eggs snakes & birds the show of things. Thereby indifference to the differences that constitute
Kind II Born in Sweat worms the world will be inculcated. Indifference to pleasures or to differences
Kind III Springing from the earth trees & plants will make one detached from the world of getting & spending. His
Kind IV Springing from the womb a man & an animal. senses will be checked from going after pleasures.
The creator observes that one should know this story of creation. tathendryanirodhena
Sarvanyetani sandhaya manasa sampradharayet (A.G -XI, 41) mahanatma prakasate (A.G- XII, 48)
In other words, one should know physics, chemistry, life science Once the senses are withdrawn from the world the Great Soul
and other sciences properly. Ancient India always encouraged the reveals itself. One finds the world within himself. The light within
study of sciences. But while, with the gita all the sciences are inter- becomes finer and more finer in course of time. The body & the world
linked, in the world today each science is separate from another, and will be revealed transformed in this light.
the mutual link among the sciences, if any, is not under-lined. True that How would the body look like then?
physics observes that hills and mountains are masses of the same agni rupam payah sroto vayu sparsanameva ca
mahi pankadharam ghoram akasam sravanam tatha
energy which constitute man or a Kangaroo. But the students of
rogasokam samavistam pancasrotah samavritam
biology or Zoology do not begin with that premise. They are seldom pancabhutasamayuktam navadvaram dvidaivatam
ragasvalamathadrsyam Trigunanca Trigunanca tridhatukam dhruvam pasyati rupani dipad dipasatam yatha
samsargabhiratam mudham sariramiti dharana (A.G-XII,50,52) sa vai visnusca mitrasca varunognirprajapatih (AG- XII, 60)
Fire is the form of the body. Blood is its stream. Wind is its sense As soon as a single lamp is lit, thousand other lamps are lighted.
of touch. Earth constitutes its flesh and bones and marrow. The sky is Similarly the same soul, is all the Vedic gods.
its ears. The five currents lorn with disease flow through it. It is made Thus the Mahabharata seeks to resolve the riddle of many gods as
of the five elements and it is a city with nine gates. The city is made of depicted in the Vedas and answers the question of the Rg Veda
three gunas and three constituents in, pitta, vayu, and kaf. It is the kasmai devaya havisa vidhema
seat of two deities–viz the individual soul & the cosmic soul. To which God shall I offer my oblations?
And this body is locked up in time. Time is like the vast ocean Face to face with the world soul, the brahmins, the gods, the whole
which can be transcended. It however makes them aware of the gods. existence is prostrate before it.
As soon as one looks upon a body in time, the imagery of the body tam hi viprasanghasca surasurasca yaksah pisachah pitaro vayamsi
is transformed into a river flowing in time. raksogana bhutaganascha sarve maharsayascaiva sada stuvanti
pancendriya mahakulam manovegomahodakam (A.G- XII, 62 )
nadim mohahradam tirtva kamakrodhavubhau jayet (AG- XII, 57)
The same vision recurs in the the XIth canto of the Bhagavad Gita
The five senses are the banks of the river named body. Mind is the Poetry seldom becomes more sublime. Kant defined sublime as that
lake of illusion, tossing terrible waves. which fancy fails to grasp.
The imagery of the body here is time and again & superb poetry. The vision however suggests that although in the world of appear-
Body is often the theme of modern poetry also. But there in the name ance, everything is oblivious of the world soul and remains discrete,
of realism, body is the object that generates illusion. Here body has when we see into the heart of them, we know that each particle of
been depicted sans illusion. Its limits have been well-defined. Hence existence is aware in its depth of mind that it is a part of the world soul
the reader dares imagine that he can transcend it. Once he transcends & hence they lie prostrate before the world soul.
it, This is the paradox of existence . Next the creator dwells on the
sa sarvadosanirmuktastatah pasyati tatparam functional difference of the different classes. The notion of kingship,
mano manasi sandhaya pasyannatmanamatmani (AG- XII, 58) he reminds, is not among men only. It is there in inanimate kingdom as
He probes into mind with the aid of mind and finds the world soul well as in the animal kingdom. Just as a Ksatrya rules the human soci-
in his individual soul. ety, the sun rules the stars and the elephant rules the domestic animals
Once, the truth behind one form is revealed the truth behind the that serve as mounts and the lion rules the beasts. Instances are mul-
whole show of existence is revealed. tiplied from different spheres of existence. This reminds us of the
ekadha vahudha caiva Vibhutiyoga in the Bhagavad Gita.
vikurvanastatastatah (AG XII 59) The creator however points out the function of the Brahmins or
The creator further adds wise man in the maintenance of the society. While the king sees to that
order prevails in the society so that people are lighted up, it is the wise
man or the Brahmins who are the bridge between the mundane world pravrittilaksanam yogo
and liberation. jnanam sannyasalaksanam (AG -XIII, 26)
dharmakamasca rajano brahmana dharmasetavah And the creator casts his vote for the latter. Awareness alone can
tasmad raja dvijatinam prayateta sma raksane (A.G- XIII, 17) transport one from the dichotomies of the existence.
Since the King longs for liberation of his own self and of his subjects Sannyasi jnanasamyuktah prapnoti paramam gatim
atito dvandamabhyeti tamo mrityu jaratigah (A.G- XIII, 27 )
he should maintain the bridge—the Brahmanas or the wise who could
let them cross the worries of worldly life. Such was the notion of With our existing capabilities though being pent up in the world of
administration in the days of the Mahabharata. Even today the states desires, we can be aware of the world upto the ken of our intellect.
like the United States of America always consult the best scholars in But the beyond we cannot grasp. Because the individual soul has no
policy-making while the developing countries do not. Hence they lag such indicator. Its only indicator is awareness. Once we are aware of
far behind the developed countries. such awareness we know the knower of the field which lives in the
The symbolism of bridges as structure enabling one to pass from field of the body.
one side of some thing to the other is one of the most widespread in alingagrahano nitya ksetrajna nirgunatmakah
world cultures. The transition may be from Earth to Heaven, from the tasmadalingah ksetrajnah kevalam jnanalaksanam (A.G- XIII, 36)
human to supra-human state, from contingency to immortality, from Once we reach the notion of ksetrajna or the knower, at once the
the world of the senses to the world beyond. Here the creator calls earlier descriptions of the body are revised in the sense that the body
the Brahmin as the bridge between the aforesaid two sides. It is becomes the field—the object of knowledge of the knower. Nay body
interesting to note that the title of Pontiff which is applied to Pope, is not the field. The invisible substratum of the body is the field which
implies that the Pope is the same bridge for mankind in the is known as avayakta or Unmanifest.
Christendom. Pontiff derived from pontifex means bridge-builder “The In course of his discourse the creator himself becomes the knower.
Pontiff is simultaneously the builder of bridge and the bridge itself.” With a wonderful magic of poetry the knower & the knowee are
Now the creator dwells on the indicators of order or dharma. He locked in an eternal relation.
points out that ahimsa or non-violence is the indicator of order. avyaktam ksetramuddista gunanam prabhavapyayam
We know everything by its indicator. We know the sky for example sada pasyamyaham lino vijanani srinomi ca (A.G- XIII, 37 )
through sound. And we are aware of mind because it thinks. This The gunas that are manifest die in the Unmanifest. I see them and
reminds us of Descartes who pointed that thought is the indicator of hear them always.
mind while extension is the indicator of the body. The death of the qualities their mingling with the Unmanifest is as it
When mind is confused, intellect comes to play. It is intellect which were heard. The knower is as it were listening to the endless monotony
decides. of the waves rising & breaking down in the indeterminate sea. Such
And of course there are two roads to liberation in yoga & sannyasa. imagery speak of what Shri Aurabindo calls the overmind rhythm.
While yoga implies action with supra-sensuous goals, sannyasa implies The knower knows the waves of gunas. But gunas cannot know the
awareness. knower since they are so short-living.
One who gets the glimpse of the transient gunas etenally rising & in the worldly life. He also dwells on brahmacharyya the stage pre-
breaking down in the seas through the speech of the creator which is ceding life of a family man and vanaprastha the stage when man
poetry withal will naturally be indifferent to the gunas that wear the renounces worldly life for a life in the woods.
world of appearances. He will not bow down before anyone. He is What are forests but natural shrines? In many parts of the world,
not bound by any ritual as such they look upon forest like that. “In the early period there was a strict
tasmat gunansca sattvanca parityajyeha dharmavit semantic equivalence between the forest and the shrine in Celtic speech.
Ksinodoso gunatitah Ksetrajnam pravisyatyatha In Japan they look upon forest as a natural shrine. In China a moun-
nirdvando nirnamaskaro nihsvahakara eva ca [AG XIII 41, 42] tain top capped with forest is the site of temple. In India, the hermits
The Creator, once again dwells on the nature of appearance. Ear- retire to the forests. Buddha said “forest is happiness in”
lier it was compared with the ocean where the waves of the gunas rise Dhammapada.
& fall. This happens surely due to time. The Creator now takes into The Creator further adds that renunciation is the way and the goal
account the wheel of time and portays once again the world of ap- is Brahman which is knowledge. Once again the Creator falls back
pearance in its context. upon the imagery of the tree.
The wheel of time rushes at a great speed. This body is as it were a vast tree.
Intelligence is its essence. Ignorance is its roots.
Its axle is mind. Intelligence is its trunk.
Its ties are the five senses. The senses are hollows in it.
Day and night impel it. The five elements make it vast with many branches
The circle that it forges consists of summer & winter Good acts and evil acts are its leaves.
The wheel is controlled by the three gunas. It is a flowing tree.
If it is dominated by Tamas It springs from the Brahman or Infinite.
It speeds towards hell. Two birds always sit here close to each other.
The wheel is alight with Ego. One is the soul of an individual.
Mental anxiety is its tyre. The other is the world soul. (A.G- XVII ,12,16)
Attachment is the breadth of its rim.
Greed and grumbling make its motion irregular This is surely the inverted tree with the infinite at the root & the
When it is influenced by Sattvaguna world as its manifestation (B.H- XV).
It evokes knowledge. The symbol of tree is so widespread all over the globe and it calls
And the wise man does no longer for interpretation along so diverse lines, that even volumes of books
Play the fool of time. [AG. XV 1-16]
cannot grasp them. Be that as it may the inverted tree recurs not only
Thus, everyone, can impress time in his own way with sattva or in the Mahabharata, but also in the Upanishads and the Vedas. The
rajas or tamas. asvattha true, indeed represents the clearest possible manifestation
Human life exists through time & it should pass through the phases of Brahman in the Cosmos, represents in other words creation as a
of chaturashrama. There, the worldly life or garhasthya is the most descending movement. “The same notion is found in Jewish esoteric
significant one. The creator dwells on the dos & donts of a family man lore where the Zohar speaks of the Tree of Life as stretching from the
upper to the lower regions and all of it illuminated by the Sun. In Some look upon the tree where Brahman is immanent; some again
Islam, the tree of Bliss is rooted in the highest Heaven and the branches look upon it as a forest of infinitude, some others find it as a joiner
stretch above & below the world. In Icelandic and Finnish folklore between the infinitude and the Non-manifest Prakriti. Others argue
the same tradition was firmly present in the annual sacrifice of an ox in that the tree springs from Prakriti and goes upward to Brahman.
honour of the vegetation–God and at the same time a tree was set up This is realistic. Because reality cannot be described. The creator
close to the altar with its branches in the ground and its roots in the air, points out that one must know the tree. Once one knows the non-
Schmidte records that the medicine men of some Australiam Aborigi- manifest at the root of the tree, one is easily detached from the same.
nal tribes had a magic tree which they planted upside down (Dictio- That provokes sattvaguna in him. Because some say Brahman is
nary of Symbols, P.1029) By the by the Mahabharata in which gitas sattvaguna only which implies kindness, perseverance, truthfulness,
that we discuss figure is itself likened to a tree. simplicity etc. Some however posit that Sattvaguna is different from
It is in the tree that the creator Brahma speaking in the Anugita has Brahman just as a mosquito is different from the fig although they look
found two birds. They are also rather unconscious beings as opposed as one when a mosquito sits on a fig.
to one consciousness which is beyond our grasp. masakodumbare caikyam
dvavimau paksinah nityan sanksepau capyacetanau prithaktvamapi drisyate (A.G- XVIII, 11)
etabhyam tu paro yonyascetanavan sa ucyate (A.G- XVII, 16) Or else sattvaguna is the same with & yet different from Brahman
This motif of two birds perched on the world-tree recurs in the just as a fish in water is.
Upanishads. One eats the fruit of the tree while the other looks on Clearly thus fish is on one level identical with water or sap of life or
without eating. While the one is the individual soul the other is the knowledge. Or else, ins the light of psycholanalysis it is the symbol of
collective soul. But the Creator posits that they are also material in untold treasure lying in the depth of the unconscious In Indian mythology
relation to what he calls consciousness. The bird is also widely vener- as elsewhere fish has a very significant role. The fish as the incarnation
ated all over the globe. Often it is the symbol of the soul. Some times of Lord Visnu saved Manu. In Kashmir, there is the myth of
again it serves as the messnenger from heaven. (Dictionary of Sym- Matsyendranath—the fisherman who was a great yogi. It is said that
bols, P. 86 ff.). he attained yogic knowledge when he was in the shape of a fish (Dic.
No doubt the number two symbolises dualism. It hints at the di- of symbols, P-383 ff.). Curiously enough the creator classes fish with
chotomy lying at the heart of appearance. mosquito and water with fig. The mosquito is the symbol of sucker.
The Creator observes that when the knower of the field, viz., the The mosquito lives on fig just as the fish lives on water. similarly
individual soul in the body grasps the indeterminate consciousness sattvaguna lives on Brahman or the knowledge of the Infinitude. With
that transcends the body it is liberated. the creator, nothing is trifle or ignoble, not even a mosquito.
One of the most interesting points regarding the style of the gitas In response to the Creator’s speech the rishis mention almost all
and perhaps of the whole range of ancient Indian thought is that it is the possible ways of life and asks which is the best way to truth. The
never logocentrie. It always questions itself. Thus the creator questions mention of all the possible ways of life based on all the possible world–
the image of the inverted tree, as posited earlier— views at once makes the discourse very relevant to modern readers.
Because the risis themselves play the role of the modern reader when influenced by the world. The symbol of lotus is recurrent in ancient
they ask. Indian literature as well as in Chinese & Japanese. It is the first of all
urdhvam dehad vadantyeka flowers, generally blossoming on stagnant & murky waters. Still it is
naitadastiti capare so imperious in beauty. Hence lotus stands for the purusa who is not
Some say while the body dies, the soul lingers. The soul dies with touched by the pollution of the worldly life. The search for truth has
the body only assert the others. Such opinions of diverse world-views been likened to a journey. If one does not have the money of pious
multiply in the query of the risis. works performed in earlier births, one cannot journey to truth. One
The Creator tells them straight-way that non-violence is ideal for must know the road or else one will be in trouble.If one intelligently
animals. The seekers on the other hand should seek knowledge. Thus drives a chariot, one will reach one’s destination easily. Where the
the Creator’s answer in response to the queries of the risis is rather chariot does not go, the intelligent man gets down from it and walks,
open-ended. What he points out is that one should try to know the instead of cursing his lot. In case there is a river on the way he must
reality. That is all. As knowledge grows the confusion will die. not try to swim across it. He should go by boat. In that case he must
He again falls back upon the imagery of the mosquito and the fig. know the currents in the river. He must ride the boat. But he must not
The mosquito is the knower. The sattvaguna is inconscient. It does be enamoured by it. Or else he will never cross the river. Because he
not know the knower just as the fig does not know the mosquito. will be in the waters only. He should know what is right action. He
The fig-tree, is also a widely used symbol. It is often symbolic of rides the chariot when it is a road. He boards on a boat when it is a
religious knowledge or sattvaguna on which the world feeds. river. Once the destination is reached one need not look back. Once
Curiously enough although the Creator uses the same image twice, the mountain top is reached no one, looks back to the uphill road that
its meaning varies from one context to another. Earlier it were sattvaguna reached him there.
& Brahman, represented by the mosquito & the fig. Now they are the Thus the journey theme repeatedly recurs in the gita. In Bodhya
knower & the object of knowledge. The knower here may not stand Gita, the speaker moves about all alone like the single bangle on a
for Brahman. It may stand for the individual soul pent up in the body. virgin’s hand. The Brahman of the Brahmin Gita has spoken of a journey
The Creator employs another imagery to explain his point. Just as acrosss numerous dangers on the road, Journey theme is always
the lotus-leaf enjoys the water on it so does the purusa know the associated with quest theme. It is the quest for truth peace or immortality
sattvaguna. But the water does not know the leaf. And sattvaguna & it is the search for discovery of spiritual centre. Journeys abound in
does not know the purusa. Similarly, the true seeker will know the the myths all over the world, such as those of Odysseus, those of the
gunas. But he will not be influenced by them. He will not be influenced Jews across the Red Sea, those of Ram Chandra or the Pandavas.
by sattvaguna. In other words, he will have no duties not even the Journeys give expression to a deep seated desire for internal change
duties that are associated with sattvaguna. Sattvaguna is like the and a need for a fresh range of experience rather than location. They
lamp that shows the road to the world-soul. The lamp lingers only as are evidence of a want of satisfaction which prompts the search for
long as there are objects such as the oil and their gunas such as the and discovery of new horizons.
flame. In other words once the world-soul is realised, one is no longer Now the road inward has been once again delineated by the Cre-
ator. Whatever one meets during one’s journey inward has its corre- Once we connect the world with the fancy of its creator, the ev-
sponding image in the journey outward since, both the world within eryday world of ours seems to be made up of the stuff of dream and
and without are made of the self-same stuff. just as we make a chariot we are players in the dream. Once some one knows the secret of the
from steel, and put it behind the trained horses, similarly in order to set same, one is no longer drawn to the sham tinsel world of dream and is
out for journey inward one has to set right his chariot of the body. The withdrawn to one’s self which is nothing but the Prajapati the creator
senses are the horses. They must be tamed. One who rides the chariot itself. How could one withdraw oneself into one’s own self. Simply by
is Kshetrajna; with him the chariot is made up of the stuff of Brah- resisting oneself from possessing anything which is created by dream.
man. And the Chariot sojourns in the wilderness which is Brahman. Because, any article created by dream is evanescent indeed. The best
The wilderness that is, Brahman is not in the least different from the way to get rid of the dream world is to say no to its articles for con-
world of ours. The Creator describes the world. sumption.
Everything ranging from the unmanifest to the particular dvaksarantu bhavet mrityu-
the living and the inert, the world agog with life & life force stryaksaram brahma sasvatam
lit with the Sun and the Moon, dazzling with stars & planets Mameti ca bhaven mrityur-
decorated with rivers and hells, decked with the water-flows na mameti ca sasvatam (A.G- XXI, 29)
is the eternal and vast forest. The knower sojourns in the vast forest.
The two syllables in mama or mrityu implies death. The three
(A.G- XXI,7,9)
syllables in na mama or Not Mine implies everlasting life or Brah-
Decked with everything ranging from the Unmanifest to the mani- man.
fest particular, the living & the inert, the rays of the Sun & the Moon So the message of the Anu gita is to dispossess. If everybody were
the stars & the planets, the rivers & the mountains & the waters, is the enlightened that way the world would remain what it is and would it
forest that is Brahman. not be a different world? Thus the gitas impress upon our mind a
Thus the reality is not anywhere away from where we are. Once vision that would make much loved earth of ours lovelier. Political or
we get at the reality, the apparent world itself is transformed plunged sociologicial ideologies cannot lead us there.
in a light that was never on sea or land. But one might posit that dreams are not in our control. They are
Consequently the message of the gita is not escapist. If the sadhaka the eaprices of the unconscious. True, our dreams are not ours but
withdraws from the world without, it is for the sake of coming back to Prajapati’s. Hence they are not in our control. But is not Prajapati in
it with fresh sensibilities strengthened with the joy of perceiving har- control of his dream? If it is yes, then, Prajapati does not dream.
mony & chaos that he espies in the world. The world is a forest that is We must remember that this conversation between the Creator
Brahman. Since it is a forest it stands for neither order or nor chaos. and the sages, is quoted by a preceptor while talking to his disciple.
Chaos only exists where man forces upon reality some order. The preceptor’s discourse has been quoted by Krishna while talking
The Brahmavana or the vast forest is the figment of imagination of to Arjuna.
the Prajapati. Arjuna now wants to know the identity of the preceptor & the
prajapati idam sarvam manasaivasrijat Prabhu (A.G -XXI, 14) disciple. Krishna in reply says that he himself is the preceptor & his
mind is the disciple. ground where the virtues are engaged in mortal battle with the vices
Earlier Krishna’s mind had taught the intellect in the disguise of the like pride, jealousy & lust, in every man. There everyman’s mind &
Brahmin teaching his wife. Now, Krishna the Kshetrajna has taught intellect must be stimulated by the notion of right action & right con-
the mind in the same lore. templation.
It seems that the mind was taught first and the intellect later. But
here the narrative sequence has displaced the same. Perhaps in the
interest of the readers who are aware of their minds and intellect, but
who are not aware of the Kshetrajna in them. Once the intellect is
taught by the mind and delves deeper, it finds the mind being taught.
Besides, when the preceptor Krishna himself says that his mind
taught his intellect in such & such way and he himself taught his mind in
such and such way, he teaches us how to conduct our minds and
intellect & what tough inner struggle is needed to lift up ourselves.
Krishna has externalised the conversation within himself. Every fiction
is like that and is not the world a fiction?
Krishna’s speech to Arjuna has been quoted by Vaisampayana
while addressing Janamejaya. Vaisampayana says that Arjuna was
enlightened at the instance of Krishna’s speech. He was happy. He
nostalgically recollected how Krishna’s speech had earlier helped the
Pandavas at the battle of Kurukshetra. He recalled the cosmic glory
of Krishna that he had seen while listening to Krishna at Kurukshetra.
He paid his homage to Krishna. He recalled the battle, blow by blow,
and remembered how Krishna helped Arjuna’s side.
Thus we are reminded of the Kurukshetra battle in its details.
Kurukshetra. battle has a specific function. It points out that the present
gita has not been uttered on its own. It has been pronounced in a
particular context which needs be understood to understand the gita.
In other words we must read the gita in the context of the world of the
Mahabharata peopled with gods, nagas, gandharvas, raksasas, demi-
gods men and women and sages.
The repetition of the Kurukshetra motif brings forth the symbolic
import of the same. Kurukshetra could be construed as the battle
ruler is the role model whom the people will emulate. If the king is
CHAPTER - XII
arbitrary, the people will be unruly and an archy will take over. In such
a state, human rights will be in jeophardy. In the so-called written
constitutions of today, fundamental rights have been enshrined. But
UTATHYAGITA
they never probe into why & how fundamental right should be pro-
Bhisma recounts what Utathya told Mandhata, in response to his tected. In a state of chaos, the people are puzzled like old men. The
queries, to exhort Yudhisthira. Even though Bhisma doesnot explicitly king should understand this and follow the laws that keep up the soci-
call it as gitam, the speech of Utathya to Mandhata was surely an ety & its order. The laws constitute dharma. Virtue need not be fol-
inspired one. Hence it has the claim to be deemed as a gita. lowed for its own sake. Dharma is rather a term which defies trans-
The conversation between Utathya & the king Mandhata dwells lation in English. Dharma are the laws that keep up order and brings
on the Rajadharma or the virtues of a ruler. Ironically enough, it is a about prosperity. Hence dharma is that which produces & amasses
Brahmin who gives the laws of Rajadharma. Rajadharma has its wealth. The king must follow the rules or dharma and his personal
counterpart in the modern discipline called the political science Politi- whims must not stand in its way. Hence Utathya exhorts the king
cal Science dwells on the impersonal rules of state-craft. It doesnot Mandhata—Follow dharma, without being influenced by desire or
give much weightage on the virtues of the ruler. The constitution de- anger. Utathya adds that the king must obey and patronise the enlight-
fines the prerogatives & obligations of a ruler. And it is assumed that, ened ones or the Brahmins in the society. They are the light to guide &
come who may, the constitution will work through him. This scientific rod to warn. While in the so called democracy of ours, every man is
attitude is most unscientific in a way. Because we know that there are equally inportant, no state can run without its economists, scientists
good prime ministers & bad prime ministers. Sociology & Manage- and jurists. But, modern political science does not explicity acknowl-
ment take into accout the qualities of leadership. Max Weber speaks edge the truth of their necessity unlike the Rajadharma in the
of the charisma of a leader. But these are studies of the society rather Mahabharata. The Rajadharma on the contrary acknowledges the
in fragments. Rajdharma however looks upon the statecraft steadily necessity of a kind of meritocracy to rule the country.
& as a whole. It underline the essential qualities that a Raja must have Uthathya in this context recounts a parable. It dwells on how the
or that a Raja must inculcate. king of demons neglected the elite or the enlightened ones of the soci-
The Raja or the king must understand the inexlorable law oper- ety and thereby lost all his glory or lakshmi.
ating through the existence and the society. He must understand the Lakshmi is the goddess of wealth & beauty and all that worldly
law through which people obey their king. As philosopher Green has men might ask for, Utathya observes that adharma drives one away
pointed out—It is will and not force that is the basis of the state. from Lakshmi. This is quite natural. Every word has its antonym. Ev-
Hence the king is the king only through a law immanent in the society. ery concept speaks of its absence. Adharma gives way to pride
The king should realise that & rule in harmony with this impersonal Utathya says that a king is one who can rule over pride itself. On the
law. He must be a tool in the hands of this impersonal law or dharma. contrary if he becomes a slave to pride he will put the society out of
If he doesnot do that and rules arbitrarily there will be anarchy. The joints.
Utathya Gita 127 128 ... A Study of the GITAS in the Mahabharata
The ancients never looked upon man as different from nature. On as a whole doesnot debunk the world. It doesnot despise economic
the contrary man is very much the part of the environment. Hence, wealth. On the contrary it exhorts the king that he must look after
Utathya argues, that if a king fails in his duty, Nature becomes angry those, who create economic wealth.
and the state that he rules, suffers from untimely winter or drought & The king must punish those who stand in the way of dharma or the
& duties. People who have innate aptitudes for certain jobs must be rules that sustain the society. The king however must not glory in that.
allowed to pursue their love. Or else there would be no job-satisfac- Utathya categorically states that he is the king or ksatrya in the right
tion on the part of the doer and the country will suffer from lack of sense of the term who is capable of changing the characters of his
production. Especially, in the third world countries today, people who men. The king is their father as it were.
donot have the knack for business activity and for taking financial In every activity as such the king must be aware of his position in
risks are promoted to businessmen because they have influence in the the society. The king is like Indra to them. His word is law to them. So
coridors of power. But this results in further decadence of the economy the king must not give in to single irresponsible moment in his life.
of a state. If the ruler is thoughtless and if the social hierarchy is not These notions echo very much in the Bhagavadgita as well when
maintained things go asunder in the state. the latter says that the common men always follow those who are in
Utathya further observes that the king has been raised only to pro- power.
tect the weak. This might put in our mind the social contract theory This does not mean that the law is the command of the sovereign.
that stated that the institution called the king was raised through con- Because the sovereign must follow the inexorable law or dharma. But
tract in order that the society is kept in order. The concept of contract with the common people, the king’s words are commands. Hence the
is absent in the political philosophy of Utathya. But what Utathya is gitas warn those who are in power in the society to behave lest their
about is that, the institution of kingship is there only in the need of law followers are led astray.
& order. But mere law & order cannot be the end in itself. Hence
according to Utathya the function of the king is to give a hand up to
the poor. If this were the views of modern statesman, no philosophy
like Marx’s that seek economic emancipation of the labourers would
be necessary.
Utathya categorically states that the king in league with the rich &
strong must not accept money from the weak. In our societies as
such, the government in league with the rich & the strong prey on the
weak & the poor. Utathya has very harsh word for such govern-
ments. He opines that if the king’s men,or bureaucrats exact money
from the poor, the king must shoulder the responsibility for that. The
king however must not neglect the merchant class. Utathya says that
the king must treat them as one treats one’s children. The Mahabharata
uprise against the king. Though we do not have any instance of mass
CHAPTER - XIII
uprise in the Mahabharata Vamadeva’s exhortations show that mass
uprises were not unknown in the society of the epic. Tax system must
not be arbitrary. The king must not betray whom he detests or whom
VAMADEVA GITA he favours. He must not neglect the weak. The king must out do the
Yudhisthira, in the role of a king, consequently asks how should he enemies, even if they are too weak to act. But Vamadeva, feels that
behave to keep up dharma. In reply Bhisma recounts Vamadeva war is not the right means to out-do one’s enemy. Victory in war is
gita. Thus Vamadeva gita elaborates on the theme of Utathya gita. hateful. He feels that the king should see to that his kingdom is pros-
The Vamadeva gita refers to the speech uttered by Vamadeva who perous. The people should be happy. The soldiers should be deft in
gave advise to king Vasumana—the son of king Nahusa. the art of hoodwinking the enemies. Once the king is strong in this
Vamdeva, asserts that dharma is the gateway to economic pros- way he should proceed to conquer the world.
perity. The king should implement it with the aid & advice of the ex- The exhortations of Vamadeva on the surface serve as a contrast
perts in this subject. The king who flings the laws of egalitarian society to the message of the BH.G. While the latter says—do not shudder
& economics & collects money by force loses both dharma and from war, and war opens up the lion gate of heaven for the heroes,
wealth at the same time. The intelligent ruler, who runs a welfare state Vamadeva observes that conquests through war are hateful. But, the
grows in strength by degrees. There are five pillars of statecraft in Bhagavadgita, in fact cries to arms only when war is unavoidable.
dharma, economic strength, desire, intelligence and allies. So the king The message of Buddha is however, very different. He observes
should not be satisfied with partial attainment of these five things. that enmity between two parties is never of any avail.
He must act in league with his counsellors. Or else he will be arbi- He asks to love one’s enemies. Vamadeva on the contrary does
trary. And of course, he must be careful as to who becomes his coun- not ask to love one’s enemy. He asks the king to act as it were he is in
sellor. The king who acts according to the advice of a sinful minister love with his enemy. Friendly attitude towards one’s enemy is a tacti-
should be killed. Thus, in ancient Indian political thought the king is in cal stance with Vamadeva.
no way absolute. He is not above law. The king must obey the tradi-
tion. Thus, the customs of a country are one of the sources of law
according to Vamadeva. The king should behave with his enemy who
has been outdone in war. This is not merely a pious maxim. This is
very practical an advice. The victors behaved ill with the victim during
the Versailles treaty presently after the 1st great war. The merciless
torture that they let loose on the Germans, brought about a higher &
the 2nd great war. The king must stand by his people in times of crisis.
The king who seeks the welfare of his people can permanently rule
the kingdom. In other words, it preempts the possibility of any mass
space or skies?
CHAPTER - XIV
In response, Rishabha the sage smiles and says that he once met a
very thin sage at Vadarikasrama in course of his pilgrimage. The sage
RISHABHA GITA was eight times taller than the average man. And there was no one
The Rishabha gita is the inspired speech of sage Rishabha ad- more slender & thin; Rishabha sat near him.
dressed to king Sumitra. The name Rishabha is of singular impor- Right at that moment a royal father, accompanied with his army &
tance. Rishabha is worshipped as the first of the Tirthankaras. Mahavira wives reached there. The king was out in search of his lost son. The
the historical personage who preached was the twenty fourth king told the sage—since I donot find my son, I think that he is lost for
Tirthankara in Rishabha’s line. We donot know whether the Rishabha good. Still, how come that my hopes do not leave? I am hoping against
mentioned here is the same as the first of the Tirthankars. The Bhagavata hope that I shall get back my son. Overwhelmed with grief the king
Purana also mentions one Rishabha as the incarnation of Vishnu. Be further asked what could be greater than hope and what is rare in this
that as it may, the context in which Sumitra asks his question & existence. A little later the king changed his mind & asked who is
Rishabha answers him is interesting. more thin than a man who is haunted by hope? What is rare in the
King Sumitra went ahunting and entered deep forests. This hunting world ?
is a recurrent motif in ancient Indian literature. It is always a sport with The king asked further—Is there any one more thin than you?
ksatryas and a means of livelihood for professional hunters or vyadhas The sage said in reply—There is no one more slender than one
King Dasaratha went ahunting & made a mistake. It resulted in both who cherishes hope. The most rare thing in this world is to get things
a blessing & a curse on Dasaratha. Dasaratha was childless. He had a in harmony with one’s expectation.
child. But he had to die grieving for his child’s retirement to the forest. The sage further said—The hope that expects a lost son to come
Even lord Rama rushed to kill a golden deer. It was the reason for back, or the hope that moves all women to try to beget children, is
his whole misfortune. That however resulted in the killing of the de- more thin than me. Hope, according to the sage is always hoping
mon Ravana. against hope. He added, people expect from people who donot keep
King Dushyanta reached the asrama of Kanva where he met their word, who are ungrateful, merciless, and lazy. People also ex-
Sakuntala, in course of pursuing a deer. It caused lot of misfortune for pect from men who serve others. Such hopes & expectations are
Sakuntala. Of course, Sakuntala was blessed with a son after whose really more thin than me. Indeed, a man, who does never ignore a
name India was christened as Bharatvarsa. person seeking something from him is very rare. But at the same time
Instances could be multiplied. Sumitra hurt a deer with his arrow. the sage doesnot forget to mention that men who seek with patience
Despite that the deer fled. Disheartened, the king took refuge in an & perseverance are also equally rare.
ashrama, where many a saint were present. Sumitra asked them as to The king appreciated the sage’s point & observed—One who is
the limits of hope. He opined that since hope springs eternal in human trammelled by hope is thin. One who has conquered hope is strong.
breast hope seems to have no end. The space also doesnot seem to Thus, the theme of hope has been dwelled on with great power
have any end. Hence, Sumitra asked—which is greater, hope or the and force in the Rishabha gita. In fact hope is a recurrent theme in the
Rishabha Gita 133 134 ... A Study of the GITAS in the Mahabharata
gitas of the Mahabharata. In Bodhya gita, Manki Gita & Harita Gita, latter’s misfortunes, with the aid of his supernatural powers.
as such, hope has been debunked. Hence renunciation has been One wonders, whether god will undo the functions of the wrongs
preached. But Krishna in the Bhagavadgita asks everyone to act very that we have already performed and the wrongs that we are prone to
much in this worldly life according to one’s station & duties in the perform.
society. The only thing that the doer should is not to expect anything in
return for the actions one undertakes.
The Rishabha gita, however, is significant in another context also.
Firstly the kings, are impelled by their experiences and became curi-
ous to known the truth. Secondly the sage Krisha also tells us how he
changed his life, when he had bitter experiences. Once he asked for
some alms from one prince. But the latter didnot oblige. Henceforth
the sage, refrained from asking for anything from anyone.
Ironically enough the prince who turned down Krisha was no
other than the prince who was lost in the woods. In course of seeking
the prince his royal father Viradhyumma met the sage Krisha. The
sage however with the aid of his supernatural power brought back the
prince to his bereaved father.
This story is significant. First of all it points out that the prince was
lost only as a consequence of his misbehaving with a sage. Thus every
one has to reap his action. So no matter whether one expects or not,
one has to reap one’s actions. So why hope? Why expect? Besides,
the way we expect from our action doesnot agree with what we reap
from our action. This is due to our ignorance. There is no harm in
hoping from an action, provided, one knows how to read one’s own
action. If this theory of action is agreed upon, could we not argue, that
the sage Krisha also reaped his earlier actions, no doubt, that have
not been mentioned here, when he was refused by the prince. If one
reaps one’s actions through getting help from others, or not getting
help from others, why blame others.
The philosophy of action is really too deep to be deciphered prop-
erly. But another point must be held. It seems that whatever be the
results of an action, a sage can redeem a wrong-doer and undo the
concerned with the freedom of the soul.

CHAPTER - XV
But when Bhisma, in response to Yudhisthira’s query recounts the
query of the Sadhya’s does he not thereby mean that whatever attain-
HAMSA GITA ment a man should aspire for should be directly related to the goal in
We have already come across Brahma gita, where the gita has human & life and the right goal of human life is to attain freedom.
been chanted by Brahma, the creator. The Hamsa gita is another gita Furthermore doesnot Bhisma, points that truth fulness, control of senses
where Brahma is the speaker. But here the creator shows up in the & the like are essential for liberation.
guise of Hamsa or the Swan.
Swan or Hamsa is creator’s mount. Hamsa has been later analysed
as Ahami. Sah. This phrase tells us of the mystry of creation perhaps.
The indeterminate one became this multiverse through the awarenees
of Me and He—theself & the nonself. Once again the awareness of
the self as the nonself dissolves the multitudinous existence into the
indeterminate one. Thus the swan could be the symbol of the eleva-
tion of the unformed towards knowledge. That is a journey on the
wings of the swan. It was this knowledge that created the varied &
variegated unverse where we live & die. It was this swan indeed the
Holy ghost of christianity that brooded on the world egg.The creator
himself is the mount. The creator appears in the shape of Hansa or
knowledge.
Yudhisthira asked Bhisma whether, truth, control of the senses,
mercy & wisdom are at all important for man. In reply Bhisma, re-
counts what the creator himself in the shape of a swan told the sadhyas
in this context.
Now, since the gita under review has been told by a swan it is a
fable. The swan is Brahma’s self no doubt. The swan is knowledge.
The gita is spoken by the swan, at the request of the sadhyas. The
sadhya’s asked, what could liberate the soul from the world? In other
words there is a parallel between two situations viz Yudhisthera query
& Bhisma’s reply, & the query of the sadhyas and Brahma’s reply.
But there is a slight variation between the two queries. While the
Sadhyas asked as to how to attain freedom, Yudhisthira query is not
mon good.
CHAPTER - XVI
If the men with altruistic temperament are exempt from tax, where
should the king find money. Well Brahma says that the king should
BRAHMA GITA dispossess the wicked & expropriate their wealth. Those who amass
wealth for themselves only, instead of for the welfare of their fellow
Kingship must keep an eye on the exchequer of the state. Hence in
men, amass wealth for nothing. The same notion echoes when Krishna
course of his discourse on how to earn money for the exchequer,
says that those who cook for themselves only devour sin.
Bhisma quotes what the wise say. The wise claim, that Brahma the
Brahma says that the king will grab the wealth of the wicked by
creator himself sang and dwelled on the financial policies of the state.
force and patronise the good in the society.
Let us read the Brahmagita.
This puts forward a question in ethics. Does the end justify the
Brahma says that the king must not impose taxes on those who are
means? Should not ahimsa be an end in itself. Perhaps the
Brahmana. Brahmana means the infinitude. Those who are plunged in
Mahabharata, doesnot prescribe any universal truth for every one to
the consciousness of the infinitude or the Brahmanas are world souls
pursue. War is always bad. And still doesnot Krishna goad Arjuana to
So every act of theirs is for the welfare of the society. And they de-
war? Actually, unlike in the west, philosophers of the Mahabharata
serve exemption from tax. Bhagavadgita has dwelled on the meaning
speak of different duties as per different ethical standards for each
of yajna on numurous level. Yajna doesnot necessarily mean lighting
caste. While showing prowess doesnot become a Brahmin or a Vaisya
of the fire. On one level at least yajna means paying homage to the
or a Sudra, it is all right with those who are born as ksatryas.
world & nature, for sustenance of mankind. Those who are used to
Brahma says that the king should see to that the wicked are ban-
such end should be exempted from tax also. Because their every ac-
ished from the kingdom.
tion is in the interest of the well-being of the world. So how could they
This is the road to heaven for the kings.
be taxed.
Thus, the Mahabharata doesnot prescribe any one road for all to
Brahma, however points out that the ksatryas or the caste from
pursue. Everyone must act according to his station & duties. We must
which a king comes, has the right to all the wealth of the world. This
not worry whether our explication of what Brahma says is in the right
assertion is singularly unique. It suggests that ksatryas are the highest
direction or not. Because Brahma posits that such discussions on
caste in their own way. They are supposed to lord over the mundane
dharma are welcome. The more we deliberate on dharma from differ-
world. Seen in another context, it means that whatever wealth and
ent perspectives, we begin to realise its subtleties.
possession could be there is owned by the state only. Thus the right to
the property of an individual is not sacrosanct. When Mrs Indira Gandhi
scrapped the right to property as fundamental right and posited that in
the interest of implementing the Directive principles as enshrined in the
constitution individual right to property could be abrogated she was
right theoretically in the light of the Mahabharata.
Brahma says that the royal exchequer must be used for the com-
And then attains old age & senility.

CHAPTER - XVII Death is a phase in human life like that only.
True that the body decays thereby.
THE BHAGAVAD GITA But the soul, that owns the body does not die.
On the surface level the main action, of the Mahabharata, re- That’s why the wise donot lament
volves round the conflict between Kauravas & Pandavas. While the When some one passes away.
Just as we change our clothes.
other gitas with the exception of Sadja. Gita harks back to the
So do the souls doff the worn out bodies.
speeches of sages told in the past, Srimad Bhagavadgita was sung And don new ones.
in the bleeding present of the action of the Mahabharata at the
The deathless soul is beyond our grasp
crucial hour when the battle at Kurukshetra is raging. Krishna–the You cannot perceive it with your senses.
Purushottama in human flesh tells this Gita, addressing Arjuna. To perceive it one has to withdraw one’s senses
Arjuna is the greatest warrior present at the battle-field. from sense-
He belongs to the Pandava side. He is the Indian counterpart objects & plunge into the deeper reality.
Those who see into the heart of things also do act.
of Achilles in Homer. Just as Achilles all of a sudden withdraws
They however act in a disinterested manner.
from the Trojan War, so does Arjuna. Achilles was angry with
Arjuna is confused. Whether to know the reality or to act in the
Agamemnon the leader of the Greek army because, the latter took
real world is his question.
Achilles’s bedmate by force. The reasons of Arjuna’s withdrawal
Krishna observes that it was Krishna himself who had preached
are different. But once Arjuna gives up fighting the enemies will get
the two roads to salvation in times past. One was the path of
a walk-over. Because, there is no other match for the warrior
knowledge. The other was the path of disinterested action. Actually,
heroes belonging to the Karuravas, among the Pandavas. With
man cannot but act as long as he lives. But this action should always
baleful eyes Arjuna observes all those who have assembled at the
be in the greater interest of nature & universe. Man is no more than
battle field and exclaims.
a means in the hands of the cosmic mind. Hence Arjuna should fight
Oh Krishna, I cannot fight these enemies,
Becauses they are, all of them my kins.
since fight he must. Consideration of victory & defeat weal & woe
What joy is there in killing them. must not bewilder him. He is born a warrior & he must act
To destroy one’s own race is sin. accordingly.
Arjuna flings away his bow and laments. Krishna in response What you say baffles my understanding—Arjuna tells Krishna.
points out. Krishna answers-+-
What you say is true. Just as fire is often hidden in smoke.
No doubt, the heroes on either side will be killed. So is human knowledge
But what is death? shrouded with emotions like love & hatred
Man is born as a baby. First, one should get rid of such emotions
He passes through childhood, youth adolesconce. and know himself.
The Bhagavad Gita 141 142 ... A Study of the GITAS in the Mahabharata
Only then, the true knowledge will shine on its own. Cannot touch him then.
Krishna adds that it was he who had taught the sun-god, the way Truth dawns in his mind in all its effulgence.
All this could be achieved
to wisdom. Krishna remembers his past lives while Arjuna does not. through ceaseless practice.
Krishna says, If one, however, fails to pursue the road to its end.
I reincarnate over & over again at will. No penalty is to be paid,
Only to rescue the righteous In the life to come, he will be either born
and destroy the rascals. in a rich family
I am alone, and yet I am many. Or else he will be born in a family of a yogin.
He who knows my supernatural self. Arjuna however asks,
Attains salvation.
If truth is one why do men worship
To know me, one must revere me
so many gods?
One must trust me.
Krishna says in reply
Hence you follow me.
I give away my all to one
Without any word.
who worships me with all his heart.
Krishna points out that But such men are few, very few.
Those who know the Brahman or the Reality And indeed, even they can hardly know me.
act & yet they are not engrossed with their action. The multiverse is in God
They offer the fruits of their action to God only. Just as the gems are woven into a garland.
Hence they do not suffer their actions. The taste that is in water is in God.
They look upon the high & low, the sublime & trifle The brightness that are the Sun & the Moon is his.
with equanamity of mind. He is the fragrance that the wind carries.
One who does not play his part in the world. He is the glow of the fire.
Can’t be called a sannyasin or yogin. He is the life of life.
The sannyasin acts without any end in view. But no one can espy him.
He acts because, act he must Because he hides in the charms that are his own.
The Yogin conquers his senses. The souls are born only to realise this cosmic self.
He is hardly swayed by joy or sorrow, To keep them ever on the move the three gunas sport.
loss or gain, or honour or dishonour. The three gunas are exerted by his charms.
To see a friend & a foe as equal is his wont. And he hides in every heart, hidden from the eye,
One must be seated on a mat by these three gunas.
and meditate. That is Yoga. Man must rise above these three gunas & meet his God.
One should then follow the middle path. To transcend these three gunas is a Herculean task.
and avoid the extremes such as One can solicit God for that.
over eating or over sleeping & self abnegation God is all-kindness.
The yogin has his mind settled He often removes the veil from our eyes.
and he plunges into samadhi Men often worship different gods.
Sorrows & sufferings, the vanity fair of the world. Their longings & leanings determine the particular god for
them. Hence, offer me everything that is yours

Whichever god one worships, I will save you from weal & woe, sin & sorrow
is but my self. If the greatest sinner loves me with all his being.
Arjuna asks—What is god? What is Brahman? What is spir- I deliver him from sin.
itual? What is yajna? When death is impending how could one call Krishna posits that Arjuna must not take him for an ordinary
up Krishna. man. Krishna has donned the human-frame on his own. He is the
Krishna saya— God. He is beginningless & endless. He is the supreme being. Joy
One’s dying th oughts determine one’s next birth, & sorrow, birth & death, whatever we find here, have been created
If one thinks of me at the hour of death. at his will. He is himself entangled with them. But men do not
One attains me only in the life to come understand that. Hence Krishna asks Arjuna to leave all anxiety with
Hence, remember me & fight. Krishna only & act.
Krishna further adds, Arjuna wants to know the special aspects of Krishna’s super-
Yoga is the short cut to truth natural self.
Rajayoga is the easiest among the Yogas Krishna saya,
Just as air pervades the skies
The deathless soul that inhabits every being
So do I pervade every living being.
every living organism is Me
With Pralaya, everything wears out.
They are born and they die
I only remain ever.
I am their anchor. I hold them.
I do not wear out. I am death-less & indestructible.
I am deathless.
Fresh life spings from me only,
I am Visnu among the adityas.
When creation begins anew.
I am the Sun among the luminaries.
The sports of creation thus continue
I am the Moon amidst the star.
through death & resurrection.
I am the Samaveda among the Vedas.
I am alone true and eternal
I am Indra among the gods.
in this ever changing world as such.
I am consciousness among the myriads of beings.
Men are overwhelmed
I am Siva.
with simple sorrows & the fear of death.
I am Jupiter.
But I am indifferent to such emotions
I am the phoneme Om.
The wise know me.
I am the yajna called chanting the Name.
They are also tranquil in the face of worldly change
I am the peepul tree among the trees.
Some people do penance to get at me.
I am the Himalayas among the hills.
Some others serve me.
I am the wish-cow among the cows.
If one, worships me with simple offerings
I am Vasuki among the serpents.
such as a flower and a little water,
I am death the leveller.
Gladly do I accept them.
Wealth & fame, memory & intelligence,
I receive one with joy
patience and mercy, prowess & initiative.
who gives me away everything that is his
are my self only. There are men who meditate on the indeterminate reality or
I am the law that the conqueror decrees.
Brahman. There are others who worship you. Who is better of the
I am the punishment that visits the wrong-doer.
I am the knowledge supreme.
two? Krishna says—
This world is manifest only through. Those who meditate on the indeterminate Brahman also reach
a small fragment of my powers. me. But to meditate on the indeterminate is difficult. To worship a
Arjuna wants to see the grandeur of god in Krishna. The mortal god is relatively easier. To deem every act as an act decreed by
eyes cannot espy that, hence Krishna bestows the third eye on God is not difficult. Such a mind-set can be easily cultivated through
Arjuna. And at once Krishna’s cosmic self is revealed before him. practice. If one cannot develop such an attitude, one could jolly well
Arjuna says— act in his own way. But he must not have any expectation from it.
Oh God of gods! I find the gods, yakshas & ogres, the sages He had better lean on God for any eventuality. God loves one who
& the mankind, the birds & animals–every one in thee. Your hands does not scare or hurt anyone. God caresses one who loves all
& feet & eyes are countless. The finest heroes at the battle—field things great and small. God protects one who is non-violent and
hang from your teeth & mouth. Countless flames of fire blow out active. God is pleased with one who has no attachment to
from your mouth. Just as the numerous streams mingle with the sea happiness & good fortune. God is satisfied with one who is always
so do the heroes of the battle field rush to thee. The worlds seem contented.
to leap into the flames of your mouth just as the flies speed to the God takes care of such a person. Arjuna now wants to learn the
lamp. The terrible energy that emanates from you seems to put the mystery of existence. What are Prakriti & Purusa? What are
worlds afire. Kshetra & Kshetrajna? What is to be learnt? What is knowledge.
Such sights send terror into the heart of Arjuna. He trembles. These are the questions.
Krishna says—I destroy the universe, in this fearsome shape. I Srikrishna answers that
have already killed everyone who flourish at the battleground. Be Everything whatever in the World is created through the contact
thou no more than my means, in this battle. Fight. between Prakriti–The Primordial materiality and Purusa–The Pri-
Arjuna says, Oh Lord! I mistook you for my friend. I have often mordial consciousness. Krishna himself is the Purusa. Prakriti is the
pulled you & slighted. I could not understand your greatness. Have manifestation of his charm. He has made Prakriti instinct with the
mercy on me. Be kind to me. Just as a father pardons his son & three gunas. Every living being is caught up in the net of Prakriti.
a husband pardons his wife so do you pardon me. Krishna now The three gunas are like apron strings with which the living beings
appears before Arjuna in his pleasant godly appearance & says. are tied to Prakriti. Sattvaguna is full of calm, purity, wisdom and
Those who are my devotees. bliss. Thirst, desire, happiness and lust are the indicators of
Those who have given up every other association. Those who rajaguna. Laziness, sleepiness ignorance, delusion are the indicators
work only in my interest. Those who have no enemy under the sun of tamaguna. Sattavaguna leads man to peace. Rajaguna drives man
do get me. to activity Tamaguna stunts the powers & good will of a man. This
Arjuna asks— body is known as the Kshetra or field; just as crops shoot up in the
field, so do the senses mind, life weal & woe grow in the body. One from the wrong. They do not believe in god. They are given to lust.
who directly perceives this being seated in the body is the knower Whatever there is on earth, they think, could be consumer’s goods.
of the field or kshetrajna. God is the supreme knower, who resides They get angry at the instance of giving away. They are always fond
in every Kshetrajna. The light which helps man discover the Kshetra of showing off. Even when they worship, they worship only to show
& Kshetrajna is knowledge. The being that pervades everything and off. They do not have even a trace of the emotion called bhakti in
yet remains unseen ; the being that pervades time is the object of them. They insult others. What to talk of men. They even insult
knowledge. He is very near and yet he is far away. Earlier the three gods. After death they go to hell. After a long term in hell, they are
gunas have been mentioned. Man must rise above them and get at once again born as men.
knowledge. Sattvaguna is sublime. Still it is also a binding. One who Krishna says that the shastras revealed to the rishis are the road
seeks freedom must tear it asunder as well to know the to happiness. Arjuna, however, asks as to what happens to those
unknowable. God is the knowledge supreme. who do not observe the shastras & yet whatever they do, they do
Sri Krishna further adds. with devotion or bhakti. Krishna points out that blakti could be
Oh Arjuna! I am the supreme being coordinating Purusa & either sattvika or rajasika or tamasika. Those who enjoy the world
Prakriti. The wise know that the tree of worldly existence has its with restraint, take healthy food and live in joy are sattvika. The
roots in Brahman or the Vast. They are upward. The three branches rajasika people love to have rich & spicy food. The tamasika
of the tree in the three gunas, make the twigs of the tree green. Men people do not mind to have rotten food. The latter love to put on
do not see the root of the tree of worldly life. Those who have the dirty clothes. One who observes sacrifices with a view to attaining
notion of the tree fell it and get the glimpse of its roots—the feet of some tangible results and fame as a religious man is certainly
supreme bless. Those who pass along the road of self knowledge rajasika. Those who observe rituals paying no heed to the rules
those who have baulked their desires & lust, those who are tranquil thereof and without any reverence, are tamasika. Penance is of two
in weal & woe, reach the root of the tree of the world. They attain types viz. physical & mental. Worship, purity in manners &
freedom. There are two purusas in the World. While one changes behaviour, brahma-charyya and non-violence are the penance of the
ceaselessly—the Kshar Purusa, the other remains changeless—the body. Truthfulness, contentment without satisfying desire, simplicity
akshara Purusa. God, the soul of souls presides over both. Krishna and restraint of mind are the penance of the mind. Those who go
observes that there are two types of men in this world in the godly for penance without any eye on its consequences are sattvika.
& the demonic. Men are so due to their activities during earlier Those who pursue penance for name & fame are rajasika &
lives. The godly men are fearless. They are happy in giving away tamasika. Those who are sattvika give away without any hope for
only. They joy in sacrifice & penance. They are truthful and free returns. The rajasika person gives with a hope of getting a likely turn
from anger. Self-sacrifice kindness, pardoning others and like from the donee in times to come. The tamasika person gives away
qualities characterise them. They are courageous and stern. On the mindlessly without any regard.
other hand haughtiness, anger, ego, are the constant companions of Arjuna now asks Krishna as to the true nature of renunciation
the devilish. They do not follow any rule that distinguishes the right Krishna says, that true remunciation does not mean giving up of all
The Bhagavad Gita 149 ... A Study of the GITAS in the Mahabharata
activity. On the contrary giving up of all hope for fruitions of the CHAPTER - XVIII
activities undergone or undertaken is the true renunciation. Every
person must play certain roles. And play he must with sincerity
PRAKRITI
devotion and bhakti. One who plays his role with disinterested
attention is never in chains. Chains mean the bonds of action. The The Bhagavadgita in the XIIIth chapter observes that there are the
right observation of one’s station & duty frees one from the bonds two fathers that are independent of Time & Space.
of Karma or action. No matter, whether the role assigned is noble That the Prakriti cannot be described by language is clear from the
or ignoble, one had better play it. That is dharma. That is worship. many names of the Prakriti attributed to it such as
Another man’s role could be on the surface more respectable than Tamas, Unmanifest, Well-being—Home, Rajas, Source—The
one’s own assigned role. But one should not opt for another man’s Primordial, Prakriti, Distortion—Destruction—. The most important—
role. Even if the role assigned to one is ignoble, one should act it. Fountainhead—Motionless—Amnihilation—Grand—Unwavering—
There is no earthly activity which is not tainted. So, one had better fixed—Existing—Non-Existing—Unmanifest—and Having three
offer the results of every action to god and act in the living present, gunas.
in perfect disinterested attitude. If one, however, gives up all activity In other words Prakriti is the source as well destruction. It exists
& submits oneself to God, God liberates. and yet does not exist. It is fixed & motionless and yet it is the self of
Krishna’s speech, dispels the depression of Arjuna. He does not distortion.
worry anymore over the consequences of war. He lifts up his bow- Opposite meet in Prakriti. It is beyond philosophical arguments.
Gandiva. Prakriti must be however understood in the context of Purusa.
Prakriti is at the same time the doer, the means of action & the action
itself. Purusa is the primordial cause of the enjoyment of Prakriti’s
activities. The Purusa, seated in Prakriti enjoys the gunas of Prakriti.
As we have already observed, the Prakriti is the fountain-head of
the three gunas. And whatever activity, we perceive in the nature,
human society or in men, are being done by Prakriti. And Prakriti is
the first tattva of the 24 tattvas that constitute the phenomenal world
for the enjoyment of the Purusa. They 24 tattavas are
1. Primordial materiality of Prakriti.
2. Intellect or Mahat
3. Ego or ahamkara
4. Mind or manas
5. Hearing or sruti
6. Touching or Tvac
Prakriti 151 152 ... A Study of the GITAS in the Mahabharata
7. Seeing or Caksus dwelled on here are not the physical ear, nose or eye. Nor is the
8. Tasting or Jihva sound or touch, the physical sound or touch. There are different types
9. Smalling or Nasa of noises in the world. The sound tanmatra is the generic sound among
10. Speaking or vac them. Similarly there could be various touches. But here one generic
11. Grasping or hasta touch has been suggested. If there were no generic receptivity of touch
12. Walking or pada there, various types of touch-sensations world not be possible. That
13. Excreting or payu is the argument. The manner in which gross elements are derived from
14. Procreating or upastha the subtle elements known as panchatanmatra has been dwelled on in
15. Sound or Sabda Anu gita.
16. Touch or Sparsa The subtle sound element or sabda tanmatra gave rise to akasa
17. Form or rupa or space. The subtle sound+the subtle touch element (sparsa
18. Taste or rasa tanmatra) gave rise to vayu or air. The subtle sound+subtle
19. Smell or gandha touch+subtle form (rupatanmatra) made the gross element fire (agni).
20. Space or akasa The subtle sound+subtle touch+ subtle form+subtle taste element (rasa
21. Air or Vayu tanmatra) generate water or ap. The subtle sound+the subtle touch
22. Fire or agni subtle form subtle taste+subtle smell element produce the earth. Hence
23. Water or ap earth has all the five elements in it viz sound, touch, form, taste &
24. Earth or Prithvi smell.
The primordial materiality or Prakriti is inherently generative. It has The twenty four tattvas beginning with Prakriti could be arranged
been itself however not generated. Hence it will not dissolve. The as follows :
twenty-three subdivistion are described as being generated. They are Prakriti
therefore apt to dissolve. They are temporal spatial and unstable. Seven Intellect
Ego or Ahamkara (Undifferentiated ego)
of the subdivisions of Prakriti are generated and at the same time
generative. They are mahat, ahamkara and the five subtle elements Vaikarika Tejas ego or Rajasika ego
or panca tanmatra. The Intellect is born of Prakriti. It generates or Sattvika ego
ahamkara. The ahamkara generates manas. Ahamkara also Mind Tamasika ego
generates the panca Jnanendriya five Karmendriyas and the five
hearing speaking Sound Space
tanmatras. These five tanmatras in turn give rise to the five gross
touching Grasping touch air
elements or pancabhuta. The manas, the five bhutas, the ten indriyas Seeing Walking form fire
however do not generate such divisions. Because they take part in the Tasting excreting taste water
theatre of the phenomenal world. Smelling procreating smell earth
It should be however remembered that the ear, nose, eyes that are
Prakriti 153 154 ... A Study of the GITAS in the Mahabharata
The above fattvas could be further understood in terms of the two

sets. While mind, intellect & ego constitute the internal organs, the
rest constitute the external organs as well as the world out there.
The internal organs
Adhyatma Adhibhuta Adhidevata
Mind Samkalpa Vikalpa Chandra
To do or not to do
Intellect To decide Brahma
Ego To suffer from ego Rudra
The concept of adhibhuta, adhidaiva and adhyatmika is a univer-

sally recagnised paradigm to analyse and comprehend things in the
world. The adhibhuta is what we perceive or act. The adhibhuta is
perceptible. The adhyatmika is the tool with which we do so. The
adhidaivata is the presidising deity of each tool or act. That way we
could interpret the symbolism of the different gods. For example the
Sun or Surya is the adhidevata of the eye and seeing. Indeed, if the
sun were not there, we could not see & there would be no use of the
eye organ. And surely, each Jnanedrya or Karmendrya is linked
with one or other of the five Mahabhutas.
The internal organs however are not related with the
Panchamahabhuta. They only act through the Jnanendryas &
Karmendryas in the world made of the Panchamahabhutas.
The Panchamahabhuta in turn exist in the three worlds of land
water & sky.
The Panchamahabhuta give rise to four kinds of life in the birds
& snakes (those which are hatched from eggs) the worms (that are
born from mud & the like) the plants (that spring from the earth) & the
orgnisms that spring from the womb.
Here body should mean every physical body in the universe.

CHAPTER - XIX
Every body has its functions. And whatever activities are there in
the world functions under the spell of the three Gunas.
THREE GUNAS Bodies exist in time. Every act takes place in Time. The Anugita
The three gunas are a recurrent motif in the gitas, especially in the describes the wheel of Time as created by the three gunas.
Bhagavadgita and the Anugita. It occurs at least once in the Hamsagita Even the very tattvas that constitute the World or the wheel of
(Sl. 23) & once in the Vritragita (al-46). Time, own their creation to the three Gunas.
In the Parasaragita also it recurs once (VI-2) The eleventh chapter of the Anu gita observes that the ‘I’ or Ego
The three gunas recur not only in the gitas under study but also in was the first born from the indeterminate Reality. This Ego has created
the whole range of Puranic literature. everything in the world. He has created the world. This ego has three
The word Guna could mean (1) cord or rope. Besides (2) it could kinds of manifestation in Tamasika, Vaikarika & Taijasa.
be used as ‘secondaries’ to something. Thirdly it might imply ‘attribute’ In other words the whole existence is permeated with the three
or ‘quality’ of a substance. Moreover it might mean outstanding merit. gunas.
When the Hamsagita says The Chapter XIV of the Gita observes.
Na tatha vaktumichhanti Kalyanan Sattva guna is light and it exposes everything.
puruse gunan
guna has been used in the sloka as ‘outstanding merit’. Rajas is activity. It has thirst for achievement.
But otherwise it is secondary to Prakriti Tamas implies ignorance. It puts everything under spell.
The Srimad Bhagavad Gita dwells on the gunas in details in the These three qualities are not discrete.
Gunatraya Vibhaga Yoga Chapter XIV and the Chapters following, They are however a part of the continuum.
so does the Anugita dwell on it in the 6th Chapter onwards. But if we In other words everything consists of the three gunas. In some,
just see into the allusions to the gunas dispersed in the rest of the one or other of them dominate. That is all. Actually Sattva and tamas
chapters of the Bhagavadgita we find that guna has been used both as are the two poles of the same continuum Sattva implies openness.
a rope and an attribute. Tamas hides everything. Rajas moves to and fro from one pole
Indeed the Gunas are secondary to Prakriti. They are the attributes to another. It implies restlessness and activity.
of the Prakriti. They act as the rope. Man and World are both These three qualities dominate the living & the inert. For example
overpowered by it. tamas dominates among the inert, the animals, the worms and the
Indeed the guras function as the rope that binds the owner of the mean people among us–Men. (A.G-II, 25 also A.G-IX, 20,22)
body in the body. No wonder that man has been also classified under four castes, in
Sattvam rajastamah iti gunah prakriti sambhavah the light of the three gunas.
nivadhnanti mahavaho dehe dehinamavyam. It should be remembered that one acts impelled by the a priori
(BhG-XIV, 5) guna, that dominates him.
Three Gunas 157 158 ... A Study of the GITAS in the Mahabharata
The qualities of a man dominated by Tamas are, lust, ignorance, & hydrogenness of hydrogen give rise to the thirst—quenching power
reluctance to give up, irresponsibility, day-dreaming, arrogance, fear, of water. As long as, science does not explain it, it can not have any
greed, finding fault with others, forgetfulness, heedlessness to claim to hundred percent truth. We know each thing through its
consequences, atheism, characterlessness, incapability to judge the difference from another thing. And the difference is perceived through
right from the wrong, blindness that deems ignorance as knowledge difference in their respective qualities. The cup on the table has a
and evil as good, unfriendliness, ugly notions, faithlessness, frolishness, unique shape ; it has solidity ; it is white and so on. These qualities of
crookedness, feigning not to understand, to perform unholy the cup, distinguish it from saucer or from a pan. The approach of the
acts, laziness, lack of reverence, want of self-control, tendency gitas and the ancient Indian literature is to focus on this distinguishing
to perform profane acts etc. (Ag-II,12,18) quality of an object, be it inert or living. Take away sugarness from
Anxiety, beauty, effort, joy & sorrow, wealth, war & peace, causality, sugar, will it remain sugar anymore? The many qualities that we perceive
discontent, mercy, prowes, strength, arrogance, anger, exercise, quarrel, in the world have been reduced to three primal ones in sattva rajas
jealousy, attachment, finding fault with others, love for tourneys, affection, and tames by the ancient Indian seers. Whatever we perceive in the
killing, limitations, grief, buying & selling, to torture others, repentance, world is a combination of these three.
to brood over useless things, exhilaration, excitenent, rape, self-centred- The world view of the seers is that these gunas being facades of
ness, slaving for others, lust to be at another’s disposal, to show off the same continuum are one-trigun. They are not the tattvas that
oneself, prodigality, slandering, acceptance of gifts—all these constitute the world. They are not entities. But they become the entities.
characterise the people who have more rajas. Since, the same Triguna work through mind as well as matter, according
(A.G- VII, 1-8) to the seers of the gitas there is no ontological distinction between
Joy and happiness, progress, to express oneself, unmiserliness, matter & mind. The Cartesian dichotomy of mind having thought as its
fear-lessness, contentment, kindness, perseverance, non-violence, quality and matter having extension as its quality holds no water in this
equanimity of mind, truthfulness, simiplicity, without anger, without light. The subjective flow of experience is simply another way of
jealousy, cleanliness in every aspect, skill, prowess — these characterise describing the objective primal material energy that manifest in a
the people who have more Sattva. continuing process of spontaneous activity, rational ordering &
(A.G-VIII,2) determinate formulation. In other words the subjective dilemma is but
Consequently, Lord Krishna characterises different activities of men, the inherent dilemma in the world.
such as making gifts, observing rituals and their attitudes on the scale
of the three gunas.
This classification of men & all that we survey in this phenomenal
world is not based on any arbitrary view point at all. We human beings
are five sensory animals. The approach of our science is quantitative
& not qualitative. Our scientist can show how hydrogen and oxygen
mingle to make water. But can it explain how the oxygenness of oxygen
CHAPTER - XX CHAPTER - XXI
THE AHAMKARA
PURUSA
The tenth & eleventh chapter of the Anugita dwells on Mahat which The concept of Purusa; must be understood in terms of Prakriti
sprang first from the primordial materiality or Prakriti. and Purushottama. Prakriti & Purusha are both primordial. Prakriti
The Mahat manifested into ego when differentiated. The Ego of according to chapter XIII Bhagavad Gita presides over causality.
those types were dominated by one or another Guna. The tamasika Prakriti is the fountain-head of ego, intellect & mind-in short antah,
ego manifested itself into the five elements in Eter, Air, Fire, Water and karana as well as the body and the physical nature consisting of earth
Earth. The Vaikarika ego caused the Jnanendryas to be born. It is air fire and ether. In other words mind is made of the same stuff as
dominated by Sattva. The Taijasa ego caused the five Karmendryas physical nature. The West under the impact of Descartes however
and the five prauas or life-breaths to emerge. has been suffering from mind-matter dichotomy. Physics cannot ex-
Mahat plain mind. Science has developed a theory whereby life & mind have
Ego
evolved from matter. The theory of mind as per the gitas seem to see
Tamasika Vaikarika Tajasa
Sky Ear Speech eye to eye with that of modern science on the whole. But the notion of
Air Skin Hand The five breaths Purusa as different from Prakriti is quite absent in Western science
Fire Eye Leg & philosophy. The concept of Purusha is unique. If mind is Prakriti
Water Tongue exeretion and nothing else, Purusa is different from what Prakriti is. Purusa is
Earth Nose Sexorgan
mindless, egoless and sans intellect. And still it is what enjoys the
fortunes of Prakriti. It is not merely a witness.
Prakriti is everything that we perceives Purusha is what Prakriti
is not. Thus Purusa is nothing. It is this nothing that not only witnesses
the change in Prakriti, but also has empathy for the changes in Prakriti.
Thereby it undergoes the fortunes of Prakriti and transmigration.
How does the Nothing undergoes the fortunes of Prakriti and
transmigration. The one nothing is conceived by the intellect. Intellect
is limited by the body. And the one nothing becomes pent up in myriads
of bodies as myriads of nothings. Nothing has no content. But when
the limited intellect conceives it, nothing appears as what it is not. It
passively takes on all content, whether subjective or objective as a
transparent witness. A double negation occurs, whereby that which
has nothing & that which is nothing appears to have content and
Purusa 161 162 ... A Study of the GITAS in the Mahabharata
conciousness. Consciousness is always consciousness of something. Harita could be impressed on the minds of men, the life and world
It is thereby limited. It cannot grasp the infinite. The nothing makes about us would be different. Thus the speaker of the Harita Gita is a
intellect what it is, that is conscious of the self of intellect & body. At psychologist par excellence.
the same time, the one nothing being coloured with the consciousness Of course the Harita Gita poses a few problems. For example
of the intellect which is always limited becomes fragmented and each some men of our time might ask whether the ideal man of the Harita
fragment of nothing thereby becomes conscious. This is how the one Gita is ideal enough? Is he not an escapist?
purusa becomes many purusas or the individual souls that undergo Besides, as per the frame of reference in the then India, chatur-
transmigration of the soul. The avyakta and the vyakta. varna and the chatur-ashrama are archetypal. Even Lord Krishna —
vyaktah sattvagunastesam purusovyakta ishyate. the highest voice under the sun asserts that he founded the four castes
(AG XX-16) on the basis of station and duties
The nothing and everything or Prakriti, (Ag-20-16) are sublated And everyone should keep to his station and duties. And of course
under the notion of Brahman. Hence Brahman has been described as one should obey the four stages of life as depicted by Kalidasa.
is and is not. It is the function of Purushottama to preside over Brahman
and Prakriti both. Brahman is his residence, Brahman is his higher
charm. Prakriti is his lower faculty.
The Visnu, the Purushottama, through the nothing, distorted in the
body donning eleven senses, viz, the five sense of awareness,
jnanendryas, five senses with which one acts viz Karmendryas and
mind drinks in the Prakriti with their rays.
Indeed, if there were no Purusa, no individual soul viz. the nothing
fragmented in myriads of bodies to enjoy the world, would there be
any world as such?
He is always in control of himself. He is alone. He has no home.
He is always plunged in awareness. He has no rapport with those
who are in worldly life or else who are in Vanaprastha.
Indeed those who have the awareness can attain liberation. Or
else it will be sheer hard work and nothing will come out of it.
The final legitimation of Harita is—
say—Have no fear, to all the world and get out of the worldly life.
Krishna also repeatedly dwells on the model of an ideal man.
Actually man does not act from any abstract idea in his mind. He
must have a model engraved in his psyche. If the ideal man of the
(Also compare Anu gita Ch.II 49. Here it is attributed to Brah-

CHAPTER - XXII
man).
The same sloka recurs in the Ag. X 4 as well. But the Anu gita
THE ARCHETYPE OF PURUSASUKTA SRI VISNU attributes this myriad limbed purusa to Mahat, which has sprung from
the Avyakta or Prakriti. This Mahat is known as Visnu.
Vritra claims he has seen the Vaikuntha purusa Visnu. He is the In the Purusasukta, the Virat, sprang from this myriad headed
only deathless eternal entity. He is white. His hair is grey. He has grey purusa and the four castes sprang from four parts of his body. In the
beard & moustache. He is the grandfather of the existence. He lives in Parasara gita, on the other hand the fountain head of the four castes is
Vaikuntha or freedom. the body of Lord Brahma (VII 5) himself.
Such a portrait of Visnu is perhaps not found anywhere else in the Thus while the Purusa seems to have been derived from the
Purunic or Vedic literature. The Vritra gita points out that it is he who Avyakta, and is identified with Visnu, Brahma has been derived from
creates the universe, sustains it and destroys. It is he who is the changing Visnu according to the myths and could be identified with the Virat.
& the changeless in the existence. It is he who drinks in the fountain of Bhisma, however observes in the Vr. Gita that Krishna one of the
the manifest world with the eleven senses. His legs are the earth, his protagonists is himself the higher self or Visnu.
head is the heaven. His four hands are the four directions. The skies Turiyamsena tasyemam viddhi Kesavam achyutam
are his ears. The sun is his eyes. The moon is his mind, his intellect is
wisdom and his tongue is the water. The planets shine where his eye-
brows meet. The stars have leaped from his eyes. He is the world. He
is its lord. The Vedas are the hair of his body. The deathless sound
OM is his speech. He is everything what is & what is not. He is the
sacrifice. He is the gods who are addressed during a sacrifice.
We have already noted how Lord Visnu is the universe & how his
different limbs are the different aspects of the same. It reminds of
Prajapati.
This imagery of Lord Visnu reminds one of the Purusa-Sukta in the
Vedas.
The Purusa-Sukta speaks of the purusa, who had thousand heads
& thousand legs. The same imagery recurs in sloka 14 Ch.-XIII
(Bhagavat Gita).
His palms & legs are found everywhere.
His eyes and head & mouth are everywhere.
His ears are everywhere.
He exists covering everything.
darkness too in tajjyotistamasah paramucyate And of course this

CHAPTER - XXIII
Kshetrajna is the Purusa and Kshetra should be identified with the
Prakriti. Prakriti is the doer. Hence the world as a fleeting show
KRISHNA occasioned by ceaseless action, cause & effect, pertains to Prakriti.
Let us now see how Krishna describes himself. In the XV the The Kshetrajna or Purusa is conscionsness that enjoys the beauty
Chapter of Brahman Gita, Krishna describes himself as the Kshetrajna of the same.
who sees the conversation between the intellect & the mind in a par- Purusah bhunkte hi prakritijan gunan
ticular body. One wonders whether the individual soul is identical with Now this is very ambiguous. It seems that each self has a Kshetrajna
the Kshetrajna or not. in its soul which not only enjoys the fortunes of the self but also the
The words Kshetrajna must be understood in contrast with fortunes of the soul that undergoes transmigration.
Kshetra. Ch. XIII of the Anu gita points out that the avyakta, where- But on another level the Kshetrajna which includes all the
from the gunas spring and where they vanish, is known as Kshetra. Kshetrajnas is the seer. To see is to become. That is what
Brahma says that it is he who knows it and sees it. It is he who is Brahmasutra announces. The Kshetrajna is the panopticon through
Kshetrajna. The three gunas cannot recognise him. But he knows which the existence reveals itself. If there were no seer, there would
them. He is beyond avyakta and the three gunas. be nothing there to be seen indeed.
The word Kshetra could mean, any body whatever. It could be Ksetram Ksetri tatha Kritsnam prakasayati bharata.
the body of man. It could mean the body of the universe as well. And The Kshetra could be identified with the Kshara. Kshara is what
each Kshetra has it Kshetrajna. When Brahma in the Anu gita Ch. is subject to decay & death.
XIII states that he is the Kshetrajna, he is the Kshetrajna indeed in
Odhibhutam ksaro bhava
every body be it an atom or the universe. Thus he is one and yet he is
The substratum lurking behind the phenomenal world is adhibhuta.
the many Kshetrajnas in the myriad bodies; no one knows him; he
It is Prakriti no doubt. It is characterised by spending of energy or
knows them.
activity which creates & destroys.
bhutabhavodbhavakaro visargah Karmasanjitam.
Thus when Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita Ch. XIII observes.
Ksetrajnancapi mam viddhi Sarvaksetresu Bharata.
Its presiding spirit is Purusa or conscinness that perceives it, Brah-
man must be understood as different from the Purusa as because he
he means that he is in every heart as the Kshetrajna. He is in every
is aksara as opposed to Ksara. He is the changeless. The ever chang-
cell of the body as its Kshetrajna. He is in the heart of the universe as
ing panorama of the world suggests its antonym the aksara or the
its Kshetrajna. In short he is the many Kshetrajnas residing in the
unchanging. Purusa is in between them. It is the Ksherajna. It is the
many that constitutes the world.
virat of the Vedas.
When these Kshetrajnas are taken together as one he has myri-
When Krishna in the Bh. Gita or Brahma in the Anu gita identifies
ads of heads & legs. He creates and destroys
himself with Kshetrajna, he identifies himself with a lower self in hier-
Even though he lives in every heart he lives in the world beyond
Krishna 167 168 ... A Study of the GITAS in the Mahabharata
archy of the many selves in the existence. Besides it seems that there is another kind of charm exerted by
Krishna is actually the Purushottama. In the chapter eight he de- Krishna which is Yogamaya. It is Yogamaya that hides Krishna from
scribes himself as the adhiyajna. The Vedas claim that the sacrificial the view (Bh.G -III,25).
fire pervades the whole existence Thus just as Prakriti is of two types in Para and apara, Maya is
And Krishna is the presiding deity of all activity or yajna Activity as also two types in maya and yogamaya. While the maya is responsible
it has been already pointed out is Prakriti itself. When activity is for the manifestation of the external world, external to Krishna, the
looked upon as yajna, its presiding deity is Krishna. In other words yogamaya’s function is to hide Krishna from the view.
Krishna presides over Prakriti too. How is it that the very Prakriti which gives birth to Krishna or
The whole existence lives through him through yajna. And Krishna Visnu is itself owned by Krishna. The duality of cause & effect, &
is adhiyajna. He says in chapter XV BhG. that the energies that em- sequence of events, exist in time & space. But here the discourse
body in the sun or moon or fire, are his. The energies that digest food belongs to a realm, which is beyond time & space or beyond the
for the living body are his own (S-1,12,15). world that we perceive. When one seeks to express such things which
The same idea Krishna presents in third person in Chapter VIII. are beyond time & space in terms of human language which is itself
Purusah sah parah partha partha bhaktya labhyastvananyaya created with the stuff of time & space, the reality beyond cannot but
yasyantasthitani bhutani yena sarvamidam tatam be expressed in terms of sequence in time. Language moves in time.
The Purusa here should be identified with Krishna. Himself. So while expressing something which is beyond time. We have to
And Sanjay sees the Purusa through the eyes of Arjuna in Chap- make this prior to that or vice versa. Thus functionally sometimes
ter XI. Prakriti is prior to Purusa & sometimes the opposite. Sometimes,
tatraikastham jagat kritsnam pravibhaktam anekadha the purusa and Prakriti are discrete. Some times one is dependent
The whole world is there and yet it is an endless chaos of countless on another or vice versa.
fragments. Arjuna finds the future as present in Krishna.
In Chapter XV of the Bh. Gita Krishna dwells on three types of
Even though Krishna is Visnu or Mahat that has sprung from Purusa in kshara, akshara and purushottama. The Kshara is one
Prakriti, Krishna claims that Prakriti is his own. It is of two types in which changes ceaselessly. It is the world
para & apara. The world of appearance is but the manifestation of It could be identified with Prakriti. The akshara is that which
the lower self of Prakriti. It constitutes, the five bhutas as well as the does not change. This could be identified with Brahman. And there is
internal organs like mind, intelligence & ego. The Para Prakriti on a third one in Purushottama. Krishna identifies himself with this
the other hand holds all the existence in it. (Chapter-III, 4,5). The Purushottama. It is superior to both kshara and akshara. It is he
three gunas, that constitute the Prakriti Krishna claims, has kept the who pervades the three worlds and maintains the same. He is immu-
world engrossed (Bh.G, Ch-III,13). And this is Krishna-maya (Bh.G- table. And of course he is not the world. The world is in him. He is not
VII,14). Thus Maya or illusion seems to be the power of the Prakriti in the world.
on the existence. tatraikastham jagat kritsnam
Krishna 169 170 ... A Study of the GITAS in the Mahabharata
The Purusasukta says Sa bhumim sarvato vritva atyatisthat who is Krishna. The phenomenal world which is ceaseless action and
dasangulam change, has been likened to yajna and Krishna is adhiyajna. In other
These many terms Purusa, Prakriti, adhibhuta, adhidaiva, words he is adhi-prakriti.
adhiyajna, adhyatma, kshara aksara Brahman and Purushottama, Krishna identifies himself as the father of the universe giving seed
on the surface scem to confuse us. But in fact, while, Prakriti, to Brahman and superior to Brahman. This is overtly patriarchal.
adhibhuta and ksara could be identical, akshara, Brahma and It should not be however presumed that ancient Indian seriptures
adhyatma are identical. The Purusa is one which lives in every form. are wholly patriarchal.
He is the formless lurking in it. He is the consciousness lurking in it. The Devi Gita, an excerpt from the Devi Bhagavat Purana is the
Thus there are many purusas perhaps that are distorted into indi- speech of the Primordial Mother. There she says that she is, the pri-
vidual souls. The purusa, that sublates both the Brahman and the mordial reality which has two aspects in Brahman and Maya. Maya
Prakriti is Krishna the Purusottama. The Purushottama is some- neither is, nor is not. Brahman undergoes change and becomes the
times described as Purusa e.g. world being enmeshed in Maya. In this context Maya seems to be
Pranayamairathae pranan samyamya sa punah punah associated with female principle where Brahman is the seed. The re-
dasadvadasabhirvapi caturvimsat param tatah. ality is neither male nor female, but two in one. It is the Holy Mother.
(A.G- XVIII, 4) Arjuna finds the whole universe in Krishna in cants. XI of BhG
Brahman as, we have already observed is neither is, not is not. Krishna also claims over & over again that the whole universe is in
Na sat na tannasaducyate him. This suggests womb imagery. Thus the primordial father of the
(Bh.G-XII, 13) existence is its mother too.
On the other hand there is prakriti or the Phenomenal world which Visnu is the fountain head of creation. He is instinct with Brahma
is subject to ceaseless change. (A.G-XIV, 16). The Brahmapurusa is superior to Pradhana (A.G-
Krishna the Purushottama seems to be the principle that co-or- XX).
dinates the two opposites.
The relationship between Krishna & Brahman as dwelled on in the
BhG is curious to note. In Chapter XIV-3,4 Krishna says :–
Mama Yoni mahad Brahma
Tasmin Garbha dadamyaham
Sarva Yonisu Kaunteya murtayah Sadbhavantiyah.
Tasam Brahma, mahad yoni aham vijaprada pita.
The notion of yoni or the container is always associated with the
feminine. In other words Brahman has been depicted here as the pri-
mordial mother. If Prakriti is action, the first action, that is, giving
seed to the Brahman, has been performed by the primordial Purusa
CHAPTER - XXIV CHAPTER - XXV
TIME THE WORLD

Prakriti is action & cause & effect. It is change itself. Action, Krishna himself says in the Bhagavadgita ,
change, cause & effect presuppose time. Time in turn presupposes Avyaktadini bhutani
action. One is always the child of the other. The father is the son, so Vyaktamadhyani Bharata
says the New Testament. Avyaktanidhannyeva
The Anugita describes change as a wheel. Tatra Ka paridevana.
The essence of the wheel that moves in time & space, is intelli- In other words, the existence is a mystery. Its origin is unmanifest.
gence. Mind is its rod. The senses bind the wheel with themselves. It It passes away into the unknown or the unmanifest. The interregnum
is made of the five elements. It is covered with ignorance. It is born between the two is what our existence is. Hence it is inscrutable. It is
with senility & sorrow. It is the fountain-head of disease and death. a mystery.
The sound that it gives could be described as hard labour. The avyakta could be construed as the premordial matter as well,
Day & night drive it. The circle it creates comprises of summer & which is also unmanifest.
winter. Weal and woe are its joints. Hunger & thirst are its nails. Be it whatever it may, in the World that we witness everything from
The wheel is subject to the influence of the gunas. When rajas the Brahma or the creator to the myriads of the world revolve over
dominates, the wheel creates, when tamas dominates the wheel de- and over again as it were along a wheel. Thousand yugas (Satya,
stroys, when the Sattva dominates, the wheel gives rise to knowl- treta, dvapara & kali together make a yuga) together make a day
edge. It is the knowledge of the wheel indeed that helps one to get rid for the creator. Another thousand yuga together make a night for the
of time . creator. With the day break of the creator, the unmanifest starts flow-
In the XIIth chapter of the Anu gita, the wheel of time has been ering. With the advent of the evening of the creator the worlds droop.
dwelled on. The wheel of time is a substance . It is a vast sea. Its With the dawn of the next day, they again revive.
depth is unplumbed. It expands & contracts. The gods recognise it So apparently it is in Time that the World is manifest and then it is
thereby. in Time only that the creation is hidden from the eye.
In the Chapter XI of the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna identifies himself So how did the creator forge this world. Anu gita chapter III ob-
with time. serves, that the creator himself forged his own body at his will. There-
I am time itself. I destroy the worlds. after he created the Prakriti.
Actually, the pisgah vision that Arjuna espied in the body of Krishna Here one might ask as to how is that Prakriti was created. Be-
is his time-self in which time past and time future are as it were in cause earlier it has been posited that Prakriti & Purusa were two
eternal present. That is how Krishna is adhiyajna indeed. He is at the primordial entities. The concept of infinite is relative. From our stand
heart of all actions. point Prakriti & Purusa are primordial. They were never created as
The World 173 174 ... A Study of the GITAS in the Mahabharata
it were. But when our imagination, stretches beyond, from the creator’s And they cannot be exhausted or counted.
stand point Prakriti was created. Vapya jalam Ksipyati valakotya tvahna sakriccap na dvirtyam
The Anu gita in Chapter X observes that Visnu sprang from the Tasam ksaye viddhi param niargam samharamekanca tatha
primordial Prakriti on his own. He is the Mahat. Ego evolved from prajanam
its. Ego gave rise to the creation that is the phenomenal world. Hence Within a fraction of a second, the creator, can create & destroy the
Ego is known as Prajapati. It was Prajapati’s mind that created the lives.
World (A.G- XXI,14). The risis, however, donot deem the body as the self. Or else they
It was from ego that the five elements were born and hence the would not have argued that souls undergo transmigration. They might
variegated creation. Brahma says in the Anugita that during Pralaya or don the shape of gods. At the same time, the gods might degenerate
becoming non-manifest, they go back to their sources (Ch- XIII,4) into inert things. The Vritra Gita says,
and remain in unmanifest state only to resurrect during creation. Thus With the passage of time, the soul degenerates into the lowest state
creation & destruction & creation rolls on as a cycle, like the flow tide that is the inert state.
& ebb tide. Thus in other words, inert things are not also what they seem. Some-
And it seems that the five elements take shape in four kinds of life thing else, call them souls, preside over them. They do not die with the
during creation. (A.G, Ch- XIII, 33). change of their state. It is assumed that every water drop has a soul in
If our interpretation of the sloka is correct then, it is in agreement it. When it becomes vapour, the soul lurking behind it does not die. It
with the position taken by the modern science regarding the emer- only dons a new form. May be it may be a particle of vapour. Or else
gence of life from matter. it dons some other material shape.
The first kind is that which is born from eggs such as the birds & This kind of imagination springs from the perception of certain facts.
the snakes. The Anu gita classes the birds & snakes together. The Do we ever look upon a dead body, with the same love & passion,
myth created by Darwin also, posits that snakes could fly in earlier that are directed towards a living body. (A. G-II, 23, 24 ).
times. The second kind were worms that were born in polluted water. Sariranca jahatyevam niruchhasasce drisyte
They are Svedaja. The third kind were the entities that sprang from Sa nirusma niruchhaso nihsriko hatacetanah
below the soil and shot up penetrating the soil. They are Udvijja or Brahmana Samparitykto mrita ityucyate naraih
trees & plants & creepers. Besides there was the fourth kind which If we had assembled all the material ingredients that constitute a
spring from uterus. They include men and animals. body would there life appear at all?
But this is not all. The rishis look upon the inert also as a some form Our popular belief is that when a man & wife meet there is repro-
of life. duction of life. In the fifh chapter of the Brahmana Gita Narada ob-
Samsaraviksepa sahasrakotistithanti jivah pracayanti canye
serves that life appears before, the semen and ovum unite.
(Vr. G- II, 30)
Sukrat Sonita Sashristat purvam pranah pravartate (A.G-V, 6)
Lives in this world are numerous.
And we could take the cue from it and argue further. If mind were
Prajavisargasy ca parimanyam vapi sahasrani vahuni dai tyah
not there, life could not be directed to form a zygote. Mind has been
The World 175 ... A Study of the GITAS in the Mahabharata
directed by intelligence in turn. The intelligence could not be there if CHAPTER - XXVI
there were no ego which sought to decide. This ego is a part of a
cosmic ego indeed that springs from Mahat. THE INDIVIDUAL SOUL OR THE JIVATMAN
Thus, while science observes that mind manifests from matter, the
The Reality neither is nor is not. The appearance is, however
gitas posit that matter is the epiphenomenon of mind. Indeed body is
different. It consists of innumerable bodies. They exist through
a concept of mind. If there were no mind, there would be no notion of
difference from one another. The plant is different from rocks. The
body. But at the same time mind cannot exist without a body.
rocks are different from the animals. Man is different from other animals.
The two, mind & body are therefore mere concepts. One knows
More to it. One man is different from another. One rock is different
not which one is prior to the other. The same argument could be
from another. One orang-otung is different from another orang otung.
stretched & we reach the notion of the primordials—purusa and
They however seem to exist only in the contingent. Because, they are
pradhana. But since what looks inert has also purusa lurking in it, no
born. They grow. Finally they are subject to decay or death. From
body is body. And Pradhana is itself mind, born of Purusa. Or else
nowhere do they spring & into nowhere do they vanish. Or else, they
Purusa is at bottom body or sprung from Pradhana. In other words
leap from the indeterminate, and they mingle with the indeterminate
the notion of mind body dichotomy is functional only. There are both
after an hour’s stay here on earth—the realm of appearance. But the
mind & body. There is neither body nor mind. There are Purusa &
gitas posit that these appearances are the vestiges of a higher reality
Prakriti. There is neither Purusa nor Prakriti. There is neither not-
which is the individual soul. These individual souls are as numerous as
Purusa nor not-Prakriti. The reality sublates both. The reality is be-
the smallest possible particles in the existence; they constitute everything
yond both. The reality is Brahman. Brahman as the Nasadya Sukta
& every being from the highest gods who appear in the meditation of
affirms, neither is nor is not. The Purushottam Krishna, however,
the most mighty risis to the lowest particle that defies our microscope.
coordinates the reality with the appearance. He has thousand eyes
And the soul does not die or wear out with the wearing out of its
and thousand heads. We can worship him everywhere and anywhere.
vestige. Since the proper study of mankind is man, the Mahabharata
dwells on its theory of individual soul in the context of man. The
Bhagavad gita says that just as childhood, youth and old age are different
stages of the human body, so is death. One must not mourn over that.
The owner of the body is the soul which does not die with the death of
its apparel—the body. The body in the context of the gitas implies
body & mind both. In the light of Indian world=view mind is as much
material as the body.
One is apt to ask why these individual souls put on bodies. The
answer is that, each one of them have special leanings for the world of
appearance and they don bodies or are born in this world of
appearance accordingly. For example man is born into particular station
The Individual Soul or The Jivatman 177 178 ... A Study of the GITAS in the Mahabharata
& duties in this society as per the leanings of the particular soul-in-the caste and has his corresponding duties. At the same time other bodies
body. Yes being born as man presupposes human society. Each soul- in the world attract him or repel him. The different values are the
in-the-human-body is born in a particular station accompanying certain construct of the society. The soul-in-the body reacts to them in his
set of duties. A teacher for example has his duties to teach. And, of own way. Thus he develops his samskara or leaning.
course, the human society as such has different hierarchies and the When the body wears out, the soul lingers. It carries with it the
soul-in-the-body is placed in one or another station there, in harmony leanings for earth. The Bhagavad Gita states that the hopes and desires,
with its desires. cherished by the soul-in-the body accompany the soul when its body
How did desires spring? This is very difficult to answer since the wears out just as fragrance accompanies the winds. So, the soul is
texts of the gitas are silent on the issue. The Parasaragita however, born again in the body impelled by the desires. The Anugita dwells on
observes that Brahma, the creator gave birth to the Brahmins. It were elaborately as to how the soul doffs the body when its lease of the
from the Brahmins that other castes emerged. King Janaka asks why body is over. The winds that constitute the life-force are pent up in the
should men be so different from one another if they are children of body by heat. This heat shatters the joints of the body. And with great
eternal fire. The Brahmins who sprang from the creator, we may pains the soul exits from the body. The soul is born again in a fresh
interpolate, were born in human form only to enjoy the sights & sounds body. It is equally painful an experience for the soul. Because, it must
of the appearance. They however, pursued penance. But in course of gather about itself the five elements while in the womb.
time their eagerness for penance waned. Parasara gita chapter V Ordinary mortals cannot espy the soul. The Anugita chapter II
narrates how the devils were jealous of these first inhabitants of the observes that the wise can only perceive it when it comes out of the
earth. It were they who entered into men and evoked in them pride. body. It shines like a fire-fly before their eyes. The Parasaragita
Pride begets anger. And the human society consequently became nahsty observes that the soul that leaves the body is not necessarily born-in-
& brutish. Of course this corresponds with the fall of man, through the the-body presently. For a time it floats in the air like a cloud (PG.
machinations of Satan as depicted in the Bible. VIII). Finally to reap its leanings it is born again in the womb earmarked
Man and Society go together. One does not exist without the other. for it.
And the body of society has its mouth, hands & feet. The Prasaragita The Anugita chapter III argues that the soul-in-the body comes to
echoing the Vedic Purusa Sukta classifies mankind into four classes as reap its pre-natal leanings borne from the earlier birth or prarabdha.
per their functions. The Brahmin is its mouth. He gives the language to In course of fresh actions he develops further leanings or fresh
the society. Accordingly the Kshatrya is the arm of the society. He prarabdhas to be reaped in another birth..
keeps up law & order. The Vaisya is the thigh. He creates surplus Thus the soul moves along a never-ending cycle being born in the
wealth for the society through trade & commerce. The Sudra is the body and dying in the body.
leg. He is the producer of goods. The society stands on the work We ordinary men see the body. But we cannot see the soul that
done by the Sudras indeed. The mingling of these four castes brought presides over the body. It is the soul that alights the body with individual
about other castes in the society. consciousness just as a lamp that illuminates the whole room.
Now the soul-in-the body as per its leanings is born in a particular This is a perception that reverses our common sense biology. With
The Individual Soul or The Jivatman 179 ... A Study of the GITAS in the Mahabharata
us the body comes first & then life & then mind. But what is a body CHAPTER - XXVII
without life? It is a dead-body which we detest. So if there were no a
priori life, there could be no body. Life in a body consisting of the
different winds, must have the zest for life. So mind must precede the CASTE-SYSTEMS
body. The mind must have the intelligence and ego where by it could The Vritra Gita Ch.-II gives a vivid description of the odysseus of
will to live. Hence ego or ahamkara and intelligence or bodhi must the soul-in-the-body in terms of colour symbolism. Souls, it says could
appear before the mind. Ego springs from consciousness or awareness have either of the six kinds of complexions—black, smoke, blue, red,
of itself. This consciousness springs from the individual soul. yellow & white. How do the souls develop such complexion is nowhere
While mind & body die, the individual soul does not die. And yet it explicitly said. Perhaps each soul has affinity to a particular dye in
is not the reality. It is itself the universal soul that differentiates itself consonance with its desires. The Vritra Gita points out that black,
through many moulds of fragmented desire. Desire itself is desire for smoke and blue souls are just average. The red ones have great
something. Hence desire always implies fragmentation. The Parasaragita tolerance. The yellow ones are pleasing. The white ones give joy to
observes that just as the same molten iron takes different shapes in every one. The black ones are apt to sin. They are destined for hell.
different mould so does the universal soul takes different shapes as They sojourn in the hell for million times. Thereafter they attain smoke-
the individual souls in different moulds of desire. The individual soul colour. When sattvaguna seems to dawn upon them, their intellect
coloured with desire is instinct with the three gunas. controls the tamas in them. Then they attain red complexion. If
Kshetra is that which changes ceaselessly. The body is the Kshetra. sattvaguna is less, they are born as men having blue complexion.
Kshetrajna is that which observes the change. Thus the individual soul Thereafter for ages & aeons they suffer in the worldly life through
is the Kshetrajna. And yet it is itself the Kshetra in another context. births & deaths. Then they attain yellow colour & become god-men.
And there is another Kshetrajna in that context. Still they are not free from longing. So such a soul has to be reborn as
man again. He goes through births & rebirths & degenerates into black
again. Once again he ascends from black to red & then to yellow.
Thus after such ascends & descends the soul takes on white
complexion. They are as white as the sages such as Sanaka. They are
born over and over again in that robe. And finally they ascend to
Brahmaloka once for all. Vritragita dwells on the complexion of each
soul. When Sri Krishna says that chaturvarnyam maya srstam guna-
karma vibhagasah, he perhaps raised the castes on the basis of their
inherent qualities as well as colours & on the basis of their a priori
fondness for the type of work in the society.
The gitas observe that everyone should perform his duties befitting
his station in the society. The gitas broadly divide the society into four
Caste-Systems 181 182 ... A Study of the GITAS in the Mahabharata
castes viz. Brahmin, Ksatrya Vaisya & Sudra. Let us now consider of the Mahabharata in this context. Teaching, observing sacrifice, and
the duties associated with each one of these castes. accepting gifts are the duties of a Brahmin. The warrior class should
It is commonly supposed that the duties of each caste has been protect other members of the society. Peasantry, animal husbandry &
ordained by immanent law of man’s existence in the society. This is trade & commerce are the duties of a Vaisya. Sudras should look
true. The duties of each caste are not prescriptive only. Because they after these three castes. The three castes other than Sudras will
are born with a priori affinity for them. This affinity for them has been degenerate if they do not perform their prescribed duties. The Sudras
attained by the soul only through experiences, gained through numerous have no such chance of fall. On the other hand Parasara says that he
earlier births & deaths. Although the Bhagavadgita dwells on the deems the truthful Sudras as the self of Visnu–the high god who protects
rationale behind the caste system, it does not say much on the duties & sustains the world. Although Parasara admits of the hierarchy of the
of each caste. It however exhorts Arjuna to fight, because he is born castes he observes that men belonging to the higher caste is not always
in the warrior-caste. To take part in war is his a priori nature. And one venerable. A man belonging to lower caste could be a god-man as
must not go against one’s nature and a priori inclination. well. Such a man never commits a sin.
Svadharme nidhanam Sreyah The caste system as prescribed by the gitas is not that rigid. The
Paradharmo bhayavaha. Parasara Gita, straight-way observes that impelled by economic
One had better die pursuing one’s a priori inclination than to live exigency, a Brahmin could take to the occupations of a Kshatrya &
against innateinclination aping others. Thus the Bhagavad gita asks Vaisya. And yes, Dronacharyya acted as a Kshatrya, though born a
everyone to be in his elements. Brahmin.
If the Bhagavadgita is reticent as to the duties earmarked for the Thus we could surmise that a society structured by the four castes
different castes, Parasaragita dwells on it elaborately. in the main were no doubt deemed to be ideal by the Mahabharata.
The fourth chapter of the P.G observes that if the Sudras do not But there is no reason to believe that the society is raised on a rigid
have any other hereditary occupations as such, they had better serve system of castes. Surely, the society as depicted in the Mahabharata
the three castes Brahmin Ksatrya & Vaisya. The Vaisyas should pray was not a whit better than ours. There also economic exigency might
to Parjanya & pursue cultivation, and animal husbandry. Thereby drive men to occupations which were against their a priori inclination
they should enrich themselves. The king should protect them and their (P.G. IV-3). In others words, equal economic opportunities were not
wealth. The Brahmin should offer sacrifice to the gods & the ancestors. there even for the Brahmins in those days. Heredity has great
The task of the sudras is to help them in their pursuit. importance in the then society. People had better follow their hereditary
Here it should be noted that the Sudras belong to the lower hierarchy occupation. That is all. But the law-givers have provided for exception.
in the society. But it does not necessarily mean that the souls of higher A child born of a Brahmin father and a lower caste woman is not to be
capability are never born among the Sudras. In ch VII Parasara posits debunked. Indeed quite a number of finest saints, enshrined in the
out that even great souls, are born in the womb of a sudra mother. The Mahabharata are born of lowly mothers. Needless to say, the composer
risis often lifted up their children born of sudra mother to great heights. of the Mahabharata-Vedavyasa himself is one of them. The Sudras,
One wonders whether he refers to his own son Vedavyasa, the author however, have been debarred from performing the rites earmarked
Caste-Systems 183 184 ... A Study of the GITAS in the Mahabharata
for the other three castes. He can however opt for commerce, animal Man however cannot be happy with bread alone. Who will give
husbandry & other arts & crafts. But it does not necessarily mean, the language to the society so that it can meditate on higher values?
that the sudras were deemed as lowly for that. The caste system still They are the Brahmins. And surely there must be men to help all
continues in India, May be it is no longer in its pristine purity, as some these higher castes in their pursuit. And they are the Sudras.
might opine. Be that as it may the present author belongs to the Brahmin If we reflect a little, we find that all these four castes in the large,
caste & he once happened to meet the Sabars—men of a so called based on Karma could be found everywhere in the civilized world.
lowly caste in Midnapore only to learn that the Sabar people look But since a priori inclinations are not always judged, one who could
upon the Brahmins as their son-in-law. They recount a myth in which be a successful banker often happens to serve a college as a teacher
a Brahmin married a sabar woman. King Santanu, Bhisma’s father and one who was fit to be a teacher perhaps serves a multinational
had to pay respect due to his father-in-law, a fisher-man, when he company as a manager. That is why most of us do not have job-
wedded his daughter. satisfaction. More to it. It is often like a round screw in a square hole.
Be that as it may, as per the gitas, one has to admit that the soul-in- And consequently we are in a blunder-land while Alice chanced to
body, through its activities in the society and longings born thereof visit a wonder land. Here we donot have the required out-put & the
must excelsior higher & higher from one caste to another. In other govt clamours for work-culture.
words hierarchy on the basis of caste system in the society was very Ours is indeed a queer society. Here money is at the centre. If one
much advocated. is a tomfool and still if he has money, he can have a Socrates as his
Krishna says that the hierarchy is based on two axes, one is guna private secretary. If one has money, & if he is the ugliest person under
& the other is karma. Well the Brahmin hereditarily attains a love for the Sun, he can jolly well marry the most beautiful woman in the world.
sacrifice and abstract thinking. Heredity is no longer an outdated May be such instances could be found in the society of the Mahabharata
concept now-a-days. The Kshatrya has an hereditary aptitude to as well. But the chief value in the society as depicted in the Mahabharata
fight. The Vaisyas hereditarily acquire a taste for trade and commerce is self-lessness. Brahmins impelled by sattvaguna are selfless by nature.
and so on. Rajaguna dominates the characters of Vaisyas & Ksatryas. Hence they are at the highest rung of the society of the Mahabharata.
The Sudras do well when they help other castes to pursue their goals. Next in prestige are the Kshatryas. The rich viz. the Vaisyas are next
The guna that dominates them is tamas. in social prestige. Since money is at the centre of our society, one can
The second axis on which the caste hierarchy stands is Karma or rob another of his/her wealth and become rich and thereby he can
the mode of activity. Well the Vaishyas devote themselves in agriculture purchase any elevated office in the society. Often mafias are the
animal husbandry & trade & commerce. It is they who produce the members of the parliament in India. They are, the law givers. But in
wealth. Hence the society must see to that the mafias or political the society of the Mahabharata the Brahmins, who are by hereditary
parties do not stand in their way. They must be protected. Their wealth nature disinterested in worldly gains are the law-givers. One cannot
must be protected. Hence maintenance of law & order is of prime rob one of one’s character. So character & selflessness are the chief
importance. Who maintains the law & order of the society? The values. The person who is truly disinterested in personal gains can
Ksatryas. look upon the society steadily & as a whole rid of any bias. He can
Caste-Systems 185 ... A Study of the GITAS in the Mahabharata
best advise how the society should run. Hence Brahmins are the law- CHAPTER - XXVIII
givers. The Ksatrayas rule the kingdom; but they must not deviate
from the law given by the Brahmins.
THE IDEAL WAY OF LIFE
May be the society in the days of the Mahabharata, was not exactly
like the pattern of the society as envisaged by the gitas & Puranas. Though Srimad Bhagavadgita & Parasara gita, in the main and
The gitas, however, here put forward a vision of an ideal society where other gitas, too accept that each caste has its own corresponding
heierarchy in the society could be based on the two axes of guna & duties, the performance of which is a must for one who belongs to a
karma. particular caste, the gitas are of the opinion that irrespective of caste,
One might still argue that the soul-in-the body, as the gitas observe, every man has certain duties. They are, as per Anugita Chapter III
go higher up from one caste to another. Yes, if the law of transmigration sloka 15 to 18
of soul is acknowledged, they do. The truly Brahmin may have been 1. Dana-practice of giving away.
recognised in the society of the Mahabharata. He may go unsung in 2. Vrata–to take vows
the world today of getting & spending. So what? Self-lessness is the 3. Brahmacarya–to live in the truth of the Brahman or the
signifier of a Brahmin. A Brahmin is always a Brahmin whether the Infinitude.
society recognises it or not. The goals of the world today are quite 4. Dama–or restraint of senses
different from the goals set for man in the Mahabharata. The society 5. Contentment
today might find a Brahmin as a good-for-nothing. But the 6. Kindness for all beings
Mahabharata’s standards are different. The Mahabharata deems him 7. Fighting shy of taking wealth of others.
to be very privileged. Because he might excelsior higher up in life to These dos and donts, are meant for the well-being of all men under
come & acquire yellow colour—the colour of gods as Vritragita the Sun, no matter to which, station and duties he or she belongs.
testifies. Indeed these dos and donts are nothing imposed upon man. Every
The Srimadbhagavad Gita however does not give much importance man in the society has to observe those dos & donts or else he or she
to caste system. The caste-system is there. The gitas take it for granted. cannot live in the society. If the majority of men do not pay heed to
What occupies the gitas mostly is the way how man could be happy, those dos & donts, the society will go out of joints. But what the gitas
no matter, whether he belongs to this caste or that caste. Hence the emphasise is the spirit in which these dos & dont are to be observed.
Parasara Gita speaks of the ideal way of living for every one. It is Hence, there is the Sraddhatraya vibhaga yoga in the
expected that the Brahmins are the personification of this ideal way of Srimadbhagavadgita. If we minutely observe the details of what a
living & they are the role models for all other castes. In this light, every man does or does not in life, we will find that every man’s activities are
caste has been given equal weightage by the gitas. No caste has been more or less the same. There is for example, no man who does not
debarred from the right to live the life of an ideal man. give away something to others. Even the miser amasses his gold to
bestow the same upon his off-springs. The self-seeking king also dis-
tributes wealth in his zenana, among his queens. So what a man does
The Ideal Way of Life 187 ... A Study of the GITAS in the Mahabharata
is not the point, but how a man does is the point. The attitude of man CHAPTER - XXIX
behind what he does counts. And men are of three types. The man
with sattvika attitude has reverence for all things both great & small.
Naturally he worships the gods. On the other hand the man with RHETORIC OF THE GITAS
rajasika attitude wants to achieve something, at the cost of other things. Any speech whatever must have an addressee. One does not speak
Hence he worships the yakshas & the ogres. The men with tamasika to a stone or thunder unless one deems it to be alive sharing the
attitude worships the ghosts. May be, all of them worship the same speaker’s language. When one speaks to one’s own self only, there
deity. But, each one reads his own mind in the deity. Penance is also a are two selves in one. There the self speaks to the non-self. So all
socially acknowledged institution. Some people revel in hard pen- poetry is a social act.
ance, being impelled by vanity, ego and desire. These persons are as Every speech is a kind of persuasion.
it were demons. They inflict great pain upon the universal mind that We speak to have power over ourselves & over others. Rhetoric
lurks in their heart. Men with sattvika leanings are fond of healthy & is the tool, of the language, whereby we could be persuasive through
pleasant food. Men with rajasika attitude are fond of hot & bitter language. Since language is always employed to have power over
foods. Those who have tamasika attitude enjoy rotten & unclean food. others, language is inseparable from rhetoric. So rhetoric is sine qua
non with language. The gitas in the Mahabharata are very much in-
stinct with rhetoric, since they are conscious attempts at persuading
others. The Bhagavadgita is an address in the public indeed. Hence, it
will not be out of place to probe into the rhetoric of the gitas to get at
the heart of their meaning.
Thus the Vritragita says.
Yatha-njanamays Vayuh
Punarmanah Silam rajah
anupravisya tadvarno
drisyate ranjayan disah
Tatha Karmafalai dehi
Ranjitastamasavritah.
Vivarno varnamasritya
Dehesu parivartate. (I -9,10)
Just as the colourless or black wind, takes different hues being in
contact with the dust of the mind-stone of different colours, so is the
soul coloured with darkness & paleness impelled by the results of its
actions through its body.
Here the word manahsila is itself opaque, capable of different
Rhetoric of the Gitas 189 190 ... A Study of the GITAS in the Mahabharata
meanings. It might be a kind of stone, which is easily eroded by wind. Visnu lurking behind the gods.
Or else it might be a metaphor of mind itself, too brittle to with-stand Vaikunthah purushonanta
the gusts of winds called desire. The wind is thus a metaphor for Suklo Vishnuh Sanatanah
desire. These two metaphors are sublated into the large simile where, Munjakeso haritswasru
Sarvabhutapitamaha.
the soul is compared with the wind and the dust with the consequences
of one’s action. The imagery is telling in its conception. The word purusa implies
Thus the simile radiates a number of meanings. The soul has been one who fills up the gap. Visnu,–the one who pevades the universe &
likened to the winds of desire. In other words the soul has the inten- who lives inside every particle in the universe is the purusa of the
tion to be born in human flesh. To live in human flesh is to act. To act purusa. It is he who fills the whole universe. He is the archatype of the
implies to interact with nature which includes mind also. Nature is the purushas. He is vaikuntha. He is ever expanding. When modern sci-
manahshila. The consequences of the act are the dusts that colour ence speaks of the expanding universe, it reminds us of Vaikurtha
the souls. The souls are thus not altogether invisible to the eyes. The purushottama. And lo, this infinite and indeterminate lurks behind the
visionaries find it in different colours white, red and grey. This speaks gods. His beard is brown. His hair is brown. We see the image of
of Preraphaelite art in which abstract concepts are presented in con- Visnu lurking behind the gods as it were in a canves.
crete visual terms. Indeed much of the Vritra gita is peopled with Sanathumar further observes
visions of souls in different hues. They make the hues of the souls Vishnau jagat sthitam sarvam. The word jagat itself is a meta-
convincing. Sanat Kumara, the divine sage dwells on elaborately how phor. It stands for all that changes. The world of ohange is firmly
the souls acquire different colours. Of course it corresponds to the anchored in Visnu.
notions of the mystics who speak of the astral body of man. Vritra gita This puts in our mind the first two fyttes of the Ishopanisada.
has much in common with Paradise Lost. Paradise Lost opens with Isavasyam idam sarvain
Satan the fallen angel, in the after-math of the battle between God & Yat Kincha Jagatyam jagat.
the rebel angels– The main body of the Vritra gita also opens with Whatever there is in this world of flux is covered with and inhab-
Vritra after his defeat in a battle with gods. Just as Satan harps on lost ited by God.
glory & lasting pain, Vritra also remembers his earlier glory. So the world of change or the phenomenal world is not altogether
I grew larger than the three worlds & extracted their flavour & unreal. They are not like bubbles in tha air. They are the home for the
taste. Fearless I used to fly in the skies armoured with effulgence. The eternal & the deathless.
image of Vritra deeked in the armour of light bestriding the three Empirically we experience the flux of the universe. We neither know
worlds is a magnanimous word painting. its source, nor its destiny. But the divine seer Sanatkumar sees be-
But unlike Satan Vritra doesnot blame God for his defeat. He blames yond.
himself for his fall. He says that it is due to his actions that he has fallen Srijatyesva mahavahau
& lost his lustre. bhutagramam caracaram
His memory of the battle with gods is not altogether sad. He found Esa caksipate kalekale
Visrijyate punah.
It is Visnu who is the fountainhead of the whole existence. It is he yet there is difference. Dusting one’s body is easy. But dusting one’s
who destroys the world & creates it over again. self is tough. It requires lot of care. Thus there is an antithesis lurking in
Thus the seer Sanatkumar makes us visualise how the infinite uni- the simile. The self & the body are not identical. Cleanliness and god-
verse emerges from the Purushottam and merges in him only. liness must be distinguished from one another. Cleanliness could be
But how could we know him? That is the question. next to godliness. But to become clean is not to become godlike. To
The answer is become godlike, to cleanse one’s self from all crudities is very diffi-
Yatha hiranyakarta vai cult. The word rajah could mean one of the gunas and in that case, it
rupyamagnau Vishodhayet, could be one of the elements of crudities inherent in the being.
Vahushoti prayatnena Simile follows simile :
mahatatmakrtena ha.
Yatha calpena malyena
Tadvat jatisatairjivah
Vasetam tilasarsapani
Sudhyatete anena karmana.
Na muncanti svakam gandhaih
The simile is curious. A silver-smith puts silver afire to purify it. He Tadvat Suksmasya darsanan.
takes lot of pains to that end. In the same way the beings are being Just as a little supply of flowers cannot change the smell of the
purified through hundreds of births & deaths. A lot of care has to be mustard oil or til-oil, so the perception of the subtle cannot be ef-
taken to that end. The simile posits that we do not die with out deaths. fected easily.
We are substances which do not wear out with death. We are born There is a gap here to be filled up by the competent reader. In
and we die again & again. This notion is known as the transmigration order that bad odour could be dispelled, flowers need be pressed on
of soul. What is the purpose of rebirths? Sanat Kumar says that every oil. In order that mind could be cleansed, fresh throughts must be
being is purified through such births & deaths. Surely the worldly life impressed upon it. When the bad odour is dispelled, there is per-
is no bed of roses but wild fire. But, put in the flames of such wild fire fumed oil. Similarly there could be perfumed mind. Just as fragrance
of life & world, we wreathe in pain & grow purer & purer than ever. could be sensed from perfumed oil, similarly, the subtle could be sensed
Of course, we are not base metals. But we are in crude form like from one’s cleansed mind.
silver ore. We must burn in the fire of life to become pure. The imagery could be interpreted on another level. May be the
Earlier Sanat Kumar has pointed out that the realisation of truth subtle truth lies lurking in the mind. But since it is full of dust, it cannot
needs a priori purity of being. How could we purify ourselves? Well. be described. But it is as difficult to cleanse the mind, as it is difficult to
Lilayalpam yatha gatrat convert oil into a perfumed one. Mind is like oil perhaps. It has no
Prayujyadatmano rajah.
stability. And the bad odour of it could be attributed to samskara or
Vahuyattnena mahata.
Dosanirharnam tatha. habits of the mind.
People brush off the dust sticking to their body easily. After lot of The next slokas read
care, indeed, one can get rid of one’s crudities. Tadeva bahuvirmalyair
Vasamanam punah punah
Well just as we dust our body so could one dust one’s self. And Vimuncati svakam gandham
malya-gandhe ca tisthali Mahi means the earth. Mahi also could mean the great or the vast.
Jatisatairayukto gunaireva prasamgisu, His hands are the many directions. The skies are his ear. His prowess
budhya nivartate dosho
is the sun. His mind is the Moon. His intellect is awareness. Water is
yatnenabhyaseva ca.
his tongue. (S1 21, 22).
The bad odour of our mind is not inherent with it. They have been
The whole cosmos is identified with god. And man is the micro-
aquired through hundreds of births & deaths. This could be dispelled
cosm of the universe. This imagery only reminds us that each one of us
if we try with intelligence to do so.
is a smaller edition of the universe and the universe is the larger edition
This imagery points out that life does not end where it seems to
of each one of us and we are one with the universe.
end. And the way we act is very importand. It forms certain habits of
We are awe-struck and dumbfounded before such cosmic imag-
the mind whereby it misses the subtle truths of existence.
ery. We are face to face with the greater self of ours.
But one wonders how is it that beings have to go through births &
S1. 24 adds that Sri Hari is all the phases of life and all the harvests
deaths to get their minds distorted?
of our action.
Well, the following slokas seek to interpret it.
Sosramanam phalam tata,
Anadinidhanah Sriman Karmanastat phalam viduh.
Harirnarayana prabhuh
Sa vai sarvesu bhutesu He is himself the harvests of inaction too. The Vedas are his hair.
Ksharascaksara evaca. And the aksara is his sarasvati. The dharma with countless faces
Ekadasa Vikaratima (Vahumukhodharma) is laden at his heart. He is Brahman. He is the
jagat pivati rasmibhih. dharma of dharma. He is tapas or penance. He is sat as well as a
The world is lorded by Hari. He has neither any beginning nor any sat.
death. He himself is both the ephemeral and the eternal in the world. It The imagery of this cosmic being has wide connotation. The Vedas
is he who drinks in the world with the rays of eleven distortions of might mean the scriptures. But at the same time it stands for knowl-
himself. edge & awareness. Awareness is his hair, why does the imagery focus
This is an imagery which is time and again. It posits a being who is on hair? Does it mean that the hair stand at their end.
both the phenomenal world & the noumen behind the same. It is the Is the cosmic being ever thrilled. Is awareness a kind of sensation?
imagination of the seer only which can weld the relative & the abso- Once again, akshara is his Saraswati. Akshara means that which is
lute, the phenomenal & the noumenal into one. But this is not all. The changeless and eternal. Saraswati also stands for knowledge. So his
same being which is the world drinks in its fountain with the aid of wisdom, with which he is thrilled is concerned with the absolute. Or
eleven types of of distotions, the distortion of mind being one of them. else akshara might mean the primordial sound. That is his Saraswati
This gives us a curious view of the world. God is himself the world. or knowledge. May be cosmic being is thrilled with the very sound
Once again God enjoys the world through us. that rings in him. And it is his knowledge. May be aksara stands for
The word rashmibhihl, is reminiscent of the Vedas. Om. Dharma could be translated as religion, derived from latin re
The seer now proceeds to portray Sri Hari. His legs are mahi. ligare viz. to bind. But dharma has countless faces. In other words
there are numerous—ways of life. Numerous ways could give schema for samsara. And it has many planes. Each plane of existence could
to life. There is no one dharma and they all reside at the heart of the be described as 500 Yojanas each in length & breadth. And each one
cosmic being. In other words, whatever religion or way of life could is one krosa in depth. And there are countless lives that are inert.
be there constitutes a face of many faced Dharma that lurks in the Besides there are lives too that move. Thus, whatever inert or moving
heart of the cosmic being. He is Brahman. He is big. He is always do we perceive is living in the light of the Vritra gita. The lives created
expanding. He makes everything big. He is sat as well as asat. That in the universe amounts to many such containers. And curiously enough,
is, neither does he exist, nor does he not exist. In other words, he is one cannot remove water from the pond more than what a hair can
beyond words. Because every words whatever has its antonym. And do. Within the fracton of time that a hair takes to remove a small drop
as per Aristotlean logic the same thing cannot be white & black at the of water, the whole story of creation & destruction could be enacted.
same time. This is true of the mundane world where every thing exists Thus, the mighty expanse of time that covers the period of creation
through its difference from other things. But the cosmic being is unique. & destruction (Modern science cannot predict when the universe will
He neither is nor is not. Because he has no other, form which he be destroyed) is a mere fraction of a second with the cosmic mind.
could be distinguished. He is everything. He is all in all. He is the Once, again, what is a fraction of second with man might witness the
Vedas, the scriptures, the sacrifice & its priests. He is all the gods (S1, creation & destruction of a universe.
27-28). Each container of life could be likened to a universe. And the
the grandeur of the cosmic being must be understood in the con- Vritragita posits the image of a multiverse with countless containers of
text of the vastness of the creation. life.
The vastness of the creation has been described through the telling The grandeur & vastness of the imagery of the creation & the cre-
imagery of the following slokas. ator evokes awe & terror in us. How tiny and helpless we men are in
Samsara vikshepa sahasrakotis this vast world created by God. And when we take account of man’s
Tisthanti jivah pracayanti canye life in this multiverse, we are like a physicist tracing the life-cycle of a
Parimanyam vapi sahasrani vahumi daitah tiny atom indeed. And yet the Vritra Gita takes account of human life.
Vapyat punarjojanavistrtrtastah
which is plunged in immeasurable vastness. And Vritra gita, describes
Krosaca gambhiratayavagadah
Ayamatah pancasatasca sarvah beings passing through births & deaths attaining different colours such
Pratyekaso Yojanata pravtiddhah as black & smoke, & red, & yellow, & white.
Vapya jalain kshipyati valakolya The samsara or the world as such thus grows into an ambivalent
Tahna Sakrtcapyatha na dvityani entity. It is as vast as waters in the pond 25000 cube yojana in area.
Tasam kshaye viddhi param visargam
We men are but tiny insects there. We are born here and we die here
Samtaramchanca tatha prejanani.
again & again. We cultivate our bad odours or samskaras through
In our common parley, we imagine that the world of man, with
our repeated journeys in the Samsara which is like boundless waters.
families littered in it as the samsara. But that which slips moment by
The same samsara is once again likened to fire that burns us and
moment could be understood as samsara. Samsara has been de-
purges us till we become white hot like gods.
rived from the verb sr. i.e. to slip. The ever changing existence stands
It is only the imagination of the seer that unites the opposites fire & to those with whom the word tree is a shared sign. But at other times
water. a word could be a sign that is factually linked to its object such as a p
The colour-symbolism used in the Vritra gita is singularly unique. It ointer or a weather-cock. This is called an index. Harit gita uses this
speaks of five complexions of the living beings. The living beings here indexing power of language with great force in Sloka-9.
include, what we call dead matter as well. Everything is living in this The mendicant must go abegging only when no more smoke rises
world whatever. And the living in this world could be black, smoke, up from their kitchen ; and when ovens will be free from ashes, when
blue, red, yellow & white. the grinding machine will make no sound any longer, when their dinner
The foremost characteristic of the symbolism of colour is its uni- is over and their utensils washed.
versality. This is not merely geographic. It applies to every level of This is a vivid penpicture of life in village hearth in our land. It at
being & knowledge. It applies to cosmology, psychology, mysticism once suggests smokes rising from the kitchens. We see it before our
& so on. eyes. Similarly we hear the utensils washed. Grinding machines to
For example, the psychologists have distinguished warm from cold crush paddy is not altogether an anachionism in our country. And we
colours. The warm colours like red, orange & yellow stimulate. The hear it thump. But the imagery tells us of an hour when all these activi-
cold colours like blue indigo & violet give relaxation. The same prin- ties have come to rest. The house where smoke no longer rises from
ciple has been applied in many a flat, offices & office buildings. Ac- the kitchens does not represent itself. It suggests us something which
cording to Jalaluddin Rumi one rises through blue, red, yellow white is causully connected with-in our culture. It speaks of an hour when
green & pale blue until one reaches colourless white. The Vritra gita household chores are already accomplished in the morning. They
also points out the beings who have black, smoke or blue complexion worked and they have consumed the food already. Hence there is a
are partly happy. Those who have red complexion have great power lull. It is this atmosphere that has been indexed or pointed by this
of tolerance. The yellow colour speaks of happiness. The white colour imagery. And the mendicant must go abegging at this hour. The legiti-
stands for perfect bliss & happiness. The Vritra gita dwells on the mation is that he must not be greedy for alms & he must be satisfied
odysseus of a being through births & deaths acquiring one after an- with whatever he gets.
other colour, till they reach final bliss. The Bodhya gita has employed the symbol with great effect. When
Language as such is an ensemble of shared signs Words as such one thing stands for another arbitrarily & is meaningful to a culture it is
are not what they are. That is, a word is an ensamble of one or more a symbol. For example when the signals at the street square is red, the
phonemes. They stand for something else and they might be of course vehicles become stand-still. When it is green the vehicles rush. On its
direct representation of a thing. For example a map is a direct repre- own, however, Redness neither represents anything else than itself
sentation of a landscape and the painting of a tree directly represents nor does it point at anything with which it is causally related. The sage
the tree. Similarly the word tree directly represents what we mean by Bodhya observes that a woman named Pingala a bird likening the
tree in common parley which has roots penetrated into the depths of vulture, a snake a blackbee, a maker of arrows and a virgin–these six
the soil and stem and the branches and leaves seeking to embrace the are his teachers Bhisma however explicates those symbols & they
sky. The word has simply representative value to English men, that is, become indexes.
What do these six teachers point at? Well Pingala turned hope into The vulture in Greek and Roman tradition was a kind of augury.
despair & could sleep in peace. The vulture gave up the meat when Romulus saw twelve vultures alight on a spot. Romutus set up the city
other birds tried to snatch it from him. The vulture thus became happy. of Rome there only. Here in the Bodhya Gita vulture is that aspect of
The snake lives in other men’s house and is in peace. The black-bee mind which gives up the object of its greed.
simply lives on begging honey from flowers. It does not participate in The serpent recurs over & over again in Indian mythology as Ananta
any productive activity. It is happy. The maker of the arrow is so Nag that holds the world or as coiled energy or Kulakundalini or
attentive to his production activity that he does not care even to look libido lying in every human and so on. It lives in the realms below the
at the king when he passes by. And the virgin woman wanders all earth & is often symbolic of the wisdom latent in us. Here in Bodhya
alone. She wears only one bangle. gita the snake is the type of the wise who never builds his own house.
So the six teachers are the role models exhorting that one must not We may argue here that the serpent stands for the ego of the mind that
hope. One must not build a house. One must not join in any economic is devoid of the will to possess & that readily accepts whatever comes
activity. One must be all attention to his pursuit like an artisan. One on its way.
must not look up to a king even. One must not live in any company. The bee or the black-bee might here stand for the spiritual side of
The message is thus opposite to what we preach to make our the mind that draws the nectar from a whole field of flowers. In the
society a better place. We hope against hope. In capitalist system we metaphorical language of Bektashi order of Dervishes, the bee stands
vie with each other for a prize. We build our house. We have our for the Dervish & honey for divine reality. The bee could be the soul
family. We write books on how to win friends. We long for company. seeking the pollens of knowledge. Plato declares that the souls of the
We try to discover the law of success. We enjoy distractions when righteous are reincarnated as bees.
the cause of the distraction is some one’s power or vain glory. The arrow could be the arrow of light. Arrow could aim at the
Curiously enough the Pingala refers to a colour which could be heart of reality. No wonder, one who is busy chiselling his mind to
translated into English as grey. Composed equally of black & white, make an arrow of it to hit the truth, will be drawn to no diversion. The
grey is a Christian symbol of the resurrcetion of the dead. Grey is the King is the symbol of hollow worldly pride & worldly power over
colour of ashes and of mist. The Jews covered their heads with ashes others. One who seeks to make a shaft of his being to fly to truth will
to give a tongue to the poignancy of grief. It is often said, however, pay no heed to worldly glory.
that human beings are the product of opposite sexes & they too stand The virginal state means the latent & the unrevealed. The soul itself
in grey centre between the opposing colours which make up a har- could be a virgin unburdened of the worldly matters. Only then god
monious chromatic sphere. The grey area in English usage often means shines in it. This is not only the message. Of Vaisnavism, but also the
the indeterminate & unknown. And here Pingala might stand for the message, of Eckhart.
mind itself of which we know very little & which is always drawn to If man remained for ever virgin he would bear no fruit. To become
things other than itself. When Pingala gives up all hoper there is per- a virgin one must become a woman,. This is the noblest description
fect peace, for it. And sleep the boon friend of peace takes posses- one can give the soul. It is good that man should receive God into
sion of it. himself & in this receiving he is virgin.
The opening of the Bodhya gita could be termed as Janaka gita or apt to apply when one is away from human society and becomes
the language of enlightenment spoken by the King Janaka. introvert.
The Janaka Gita however consists of only one sloka Manky revels in apostrophes in his soliloquy.
My wealth is boundless Manky addresses Kama or desire,
Because I own nothing O Kama, your heart is as hard as thunder
If Mithila is put to flames Or else why don’t you break asunder
Nothing that I have is burnt, despite hitting you hard hundred times
This is a paradox that shatters all our cherished values. It posits, I wished you best & yet I never found happiness.
Now I know, that you are born of Sankalpa
that one might own boundless wealth when one owns nothing. Or the will to attain something.
The same motif has been put forward in another paradox in the I will never will anything.
Manky gita— And you will be destroyed at your root.
One who gives up all desires, attains all that one could desire. (Sl. 23, 24, 25).
The gitas revel in paradoxes. On the surface they do not have any Clearly here Kama has been likened to a tree which springs from
meaning as such. But on deeper thought, they open up vistas of mean- the seed of Sankalpa.
ings and sensations. Manky compares the world of human hopes as the sea of desire.
Manky gita as we have already noted enshrines in it a soliloquy of He claims that no one has been able to cross it in the past. He has
Manky. It is autobiographical. It dwells on how Manky himself having given up all hopes of the seas naturally. The sea is a recurrent imagery
failed to succeed in material life, has opted for a life sans desire. not only in ancient. Indian poetry & mythology it is everywhere in
He addresses the mind & says ancient and modern myths. It is the sea upon which Vishnu rests when
Alas! how foolish I have been the creation dissolves. There are images of the sea of beatitude. There
I have been a plaything in thy hands. is also the sea of passions & worldly life. Often they become heroic
Or how could be one another man’s slave
crossing it. The sea stands between us & the indeterminate. In Manky
(Sl 21).
Gita however the speaker gives up all hopes of crossing the sea. Aban-
Here Manky finds himself as plaything in the hands of his own don ye all hopes is the message. Or else peace will remain ever elu-
mind only. We talk of our mind, as it were we are owners of it. But,
sive.
mind defies our control. The paradox of our existence is that we are
Manky however compares Brahman as a cool lake. He wants to
ourselves the slaves of what we own. Since consciousness cannot
remain immersed in it in the hot summer of worldly life (Sl. 50-51). In
remain without any content as such, mind is always drawn to matter
other words, the world that serves as antitheses to Brahman likens to
or the other. And we play fools to the material world. The rhetoric,
burning heat of summer.
here employed is apostrophe. Apostrophe is a figure of speech which
consists of an absent or dead person, a thing or an abstract idea as if
The Srimadbhagavad Gita opens with two belligerent armies in
it were alive. Perhaps apostrophe is the figure of speech that one is
bettle array assembled at the dharmakshetra called Kurukshetra. The
war itself could be read as an Armaageddon between the good & the Hence, mortal battles are also illusory. Killing & to get killed are all
evil, between the self & the evil passions. The war takes place at heart myth. The indeterminate substance behind the show of reality is nei-
which is the sacred place where such great wars against passions ther born, nor dies.
could be enacted. This is best illustrated when Krishna said—con- Then how is it that men are born & then die. Krishna puts forth an
quer your enemy called desire. imagery to explain the same. Just as men reject worn out clothes for
But that is the interpretation of the gita only on one level. new ones, so does the purusha change its body.
On another level it is very much a speech on the occasion of a This is a singularly unique imagery which fingers at three levels of
mortal conflict. Bhisma sounds the conch. Presently, all the other he- reality. Because the purusa or the self might be an individual self that
roes present at the battle field blow their horns to show their readiness dons & doffs the clothes of flesh. Besides it might be the absolute
for war. The earth & the sky reverberate with it. which is always changing its clothes, without being changed even a
The sound imagery here reminds us of the cosmic sound. bit. Besides, it speaks of the mundane reality that we experence where
In the first chapter only Arjuna dwells on the ravages of war. War change is a category of all that we perceive.
brings in its trail the notion of death. The notions of life & death go The changeless reality, no matter whether it is the individual self or
together. the indeterminate substance that is the world, Krishna observes, al-
Krishna in the 2nd chapter points out that death is only a phase like ways remains the same. The weapons cannot tear it. The fire cannot
adolescences, youth & old age. This is not factual comparison. It burn it the water cannot wet it. The winds cannot dry it. The indeter-
reveals an unexpected likeness between adolescence, age, youth on minate, call it the substance that is the universe or call it individual is
one side & death on the other—two seemingly disparate motifs. The thus described by negatious. It is not an obstruction but a nonrestric-
simile naturally suggests the existence of self that lingers through both tive presence.
life & death. In front of this presence time vanishes. And readers are as it were
Krishna next revels in antithesis denizins of a timeless existence, looking upon the battles for life with
The false has no real content. curioisity to understand it.
The reality has no lack of content. Tennyson asked us to seek to strive, to fight & never to yield. But
In other words Krishna brushes aside our temporal experiences Krishna observes that one had better apply one’s intellect to get at the
like weal & woe, as unreal & sans content, because they donot last heart of the battle. Since it is nothing real, one had better take part in
long. Thus momentary happiness has no significance for the Gita. it for its own sake.
Next Krishna observes that Does it not suggest that Krishna exhorts Arjuna to play his part
That with which everything whatever is made only, at the Kurukshetra. He is not worried as to whether he can
is indestructible. convince Arjuna or not. He is not worried as to whether he speaks the
That with which everything whatever is made baffles our percep- truth or not.
tion. But Krishna by way of positing that our perceptions are false Every work of art is an example of what a work of art should be
evokes in our mind the indeterminate which is absolute. like. It is the manifesto of an aesthetics always. Seen from this per-
spective we could say that the Bh. Gita very much underlines the per-fluous.
importance of intellect in a work of art. Because it is our intellect that The imagery of flood has been over and over again used in am-
moulds our perception of the world. bivalent terms. It is the tool with which God destroys the world laden
Those who mean business, Krishna says have a total view of life. with sin. The Hindu sciptures as well as the Bible testify it. Once again
Those who are otherwise, have their intellect diverted into numerous flood could mean a flood of bliss and wisdom where particulars lose
branches. They waver from to be or not to be, to do or not to do. their significance unless as the parts of a whole.
Krishna uses a telling metaphor to describe them. The BR. Gita does not distinguish action from the pursuit of knowl-
vahusakha hyanantasca vuddhayo vyavasayinam edge. They are the same. Hence when people do things for the sake
Now on the surface those who mean business do not revel in am- of it only they are on the right road. Those who do a particular thing
biguities while the others do. But, Krishna actually means the other for some end in view have been likened to the miserly people (II, 49).
way round. He observes that those who do not mean business can In other words those who go for penance to the end of god realisation
not grasp the polyvalence of the existence. With them heaven and have been also debunked here.
fulfilment of desires are all in all. To that end they revel in flowery Why should one have an end in view behind one’s activity, be it
speech intent on what the Vedas say. Modern literatures that dwells penance or devotion to god? Moha is to blame for that. Life has been
on utopia and prescribe the paths to it, could be likened to those compared to a journey. Life’s road is lorn with insurmountable mud of
idiots who revel in flowery speech moha or illusion. Moha or illusion could be explicated as the pursuit
yamimam puspitam vacam pravandantyavi pascitah
for a particular (II, 52).
True intelligence that is meant for the samadhi must grasp the real- The true seeker has been likened to a tortoise. The tortoise ap-
ity as indeterminate & capable of meanings on many levels as Krishna pears as a symbol throughout the world across different cultures. It is
does. Since there could be infinite meanings of the existence, any said that the tortoise holds the world on its shoulders. The tortoise is
meaning of the same is as much true or as much false as any other. the incarnation of Vishnu. The tortoise held the Mandara mountain
Hence Krishna, says during the churning of the occan. Here tortoise is the type of the wise
who withdraws himself from the world of eye and ear. The tortoise
Sidhyasidhyo samo bhutva samatvam yogo ucyate
does not mind the waters without. Let the waters have their flow tide
Yoga or the skill to live implies that one had not better weigh one
and ebb tide. Let them be themselves. Let the senses work as com-
meaning of the world or of a work of art or of the Gitas, as more
manded by their instinets.
important than any other of its meaning.
The senses have been likened to powerful brigands who enslave
others and drag them by force. (II. 60). In other words the Bh. Gita
The Bh. Gita discards the knowledge of the particular which could
posits a conflict between the self and the senses. Thus the battle of
be attained only through the efforts of conscious mind. It puts forward
Kurukshetra becomes the externalisation of the inner battle in a being.
an imagery of the flood. When there is flood, the utilities of the reser-
With great power and force the Bh. Gita dwells on how the senses
voirs (II, 46) do not exist Similarly once wisdom is attained through
gather in strength and overwhelm the self. (II. 62-63). Here the figure
samadhi or inwardness, the knowledge of the particular becomes su-
of speech known as climax has been used with great dexterity. desires. To that end they observe sacrificial rites and chant prayer.
The mind has been likened to a boat. Just as the gale leads a boat The symbolic meaning of the sacrificial rites has been retrieved by the
astray, similarly the senses might lead the mind astray (II. 67). Bh. Gita. True fulfilment of one’s desire, the Bh. Gita posits, takes
The Bh. Gita further observes that the wise keep awake when it is place through the sacrifice of the self (III, 10). The Bh. Gita further
night to the rest of the world. They look upon the day of the worldly observes that the gods bestow upon mankind many a gift in the spirit
men as night itself. Thus the Bh. Gita deconstructs our notion of the of sacrifice to be consumed. Those who enjoy the gifts without giving
day and night. The night would mean the unconscious mind which the something back to the giver are thieves (III. 12). Here the imagery of
wise probe. They withdraw from the conscious mind that is active in the devas or gods must be properly understood. With our sense per-
the day. Night might mean the emptiness where the wise are plunged. ception we observe that Nature in its bounty gives us light, air, fire,
The worldly day stands for actions with definite ends in view. It stands water and food. The forces of nature that make possible this grand
for desires impelled by the senses. The night means extinction of ev- fair laden with life-sustaining articles have been worshipped by the
ery desire. Then action and inaction lose their distinction. (II. 69). Vedas as gods. And the Bh. Gita exhorts us that we must give some-
The wise have been likened to an ocean. The ocean refuses noth- thing of what we consume to the end of revitalising Nature or the gods
ing. Let every river flow into it. But the ocean remains ever tranquil. that preside over the different forces of nature. Thus the relation be-
Similarly the different passages of the senses could pour into the self, tween man and nature should be symbiotic. Modern man mad with
whatever be their cargo. The self neither welcomes nor refuses the his knowledge of so-called science and technology looks upon nature
gift. In other words, the Bh. Gita does not prescribe curbing the senses as ‘the other’ which should be raped and ravaged. He does not have
and dulling their perceptions. The self must be above them not to be any sense of responsibility to keep up the nature which sustains him.
overwhelmed by their gifts (II. 70). In the light of the Bh. Gita the modern man drunk in the alcohol of
The self in its fiesh must act. It can not but act. But the very con- capitalism is none else but a thief. The Bh. Gita says that one who
cept of action has ambivalence in it which the Bh. Gita explores. cooks for himself cooks poison (III. 13). The capitalist attitude to-
The Bh. Gita speaks of two types of Karma or action one is to the wards life impels us to act only in our own interest. This is not merely
end of yajna and the other has different ends from that (III. 9). The theft. What we consume thereby is poison. This imagery of Bh. Gita
very word yajna lights before us the Vedic fire into which wood, ghee spoken thousand years back has been prophetic. Man is fast de-
and soma rasa are offered among other things. The Bh. Gita however stroying his environment. Impelled by his service for the self attitude
looks upon yajna as a symbol. The Bh. Gita observes that it was thereby he creates the very hemlock which he shall have to drink.
through yajna that the world was created and it is through yajna that The right kind of activity should be yajna itself. The right kind of
the people should enrich themselves. It is through yajna that the people activity creates yajna (III. 14). And it is through yajna that the clouds
should be creative (III. 10). The Bh. Gita here seems to allude to the gather in the skies. It is from the clouds that the earth is filled with
Purusasukta in the Vedas. There the Virata sacrificed himself to cre- crops. The crops in turn let us live. Thus the gita posits that man should
ate this world. The Bh. Gita says that the Virata should be the role not look upon nature as the other. On the contrary he is an inalienable
model. The Vedas over and over again pray for the fulfilment of their part of the inexorable cycle of creation that rolls through the exist-
ence. The imagery of the wheel in Bh. Gita (III. 140) sublates man in The meaning of yajna could be construed in many levels. It might
it. But man does not understand this truth. He always cooks for him- mean to some as sacrifice to the different gods, who impel the forces
self and eats sin. He always acts with narrow end in view like a miser. of nature. Some others might feel that the sacrifice is addressed to the
The miser is one who cooks for himself only. But why should one infinitude or to the Brahma. Some others might sacrifice the pursuits
cook sin for one’s own consumption. Desire is to blame for that. Desine of their senses to the fire of self- control. Another band of seekers
veils the truth from the view. The way smoke veils the fire, dust veils might sacrifice the objects of senses to the senses themselves. Thus
the mirror, and the placenta covers the foetus (III, 38 & 39). Hence they look upon their body and the senses as the other, or the part of
the Bh. Gita points out that the desire is the demon to be persecuted. nature as distinguished from the self. They do not restrain their sense
The battle of Kurukshetra hereby contains a different level of mean- from any offering that the world provides them. On the contrary they
ing. look upon the gratification of senses or the deprivation of the same as
In the ancient Indian system of language dharma is polyvalent in a kind of offering or sacrifice. This puts forward apparently a very
its meaning. On one level dharma implies the inexorable law that different view of life. It exhorts that let men have their sense-objects,
works through all existence. It is the operation of the wheel. When have their sex, and have all that a life of lust and luxury could afford,
there is any dysfunction in its operation. I truth is veiled from our eye. but they must feel that these are all but the observation of the rituals of
Earlier there has been the imagery of flood which undermines every sacrifice addressed to the senses. In other words the self must not be
source of water. It was the flood of bliss. But perhaps the same flood the beneficiary of the same (IV- 26 , 27), (Also V- 80,9).
imagery has been employed surreptiously when the Bh. Gita posits, The Bh. Gita also speaks of giving up of worldly belongings as
that whenever the law of existence is disturbed or truth is on the wane, yajna. Those who conserve the heat energy in themselves also reen-
God reincanates himself (IV, 8). This reminds us of the ten avataras act the primordial sacrifice of Virata. Those who revel in yoga also
of the puranas as well as the other avataras in the different religions of observe sacrifice. So do also those people whose quest impel them to
the world. It reminds us of Noah of the Bible. follow knowledge like a sinking star (IV. 28). The Bh. Gita assures us
The speaker of the Bh. Gita says that the road he takes is pursued that whatever kind of Yajna one observes one reaches the ineffable
by every one (III. 23) & (IV. 11). Thus the speaker himself is the role- infinite or Brahma. Just as the physical fire burns wood, so does knowl-
model for all men. But at the same time does it not argue that no one edge burn all activity that have definite ends in view (IV. 37).
commits sin, no one can stand in the way of the inexorable law of Knowledge is not merely likened to fire. It is also the sword that
nature? cuts off every thread of doubt and vacillation (IV. 69). Here the reader
The sacrificial fire returns again as an imagery. It stands for the fire might remember the portrait of Arjuna in Chapter-I and in the begin-
of knowledge. Just as the sacrificial fire burns wood and ghee, simi- ning of Chapter-II. There he is the animated bust of vacillation per-
larly the fire of knowledge destroys every initiative in man. When man sonified. To do or not to do was his question. To be or not to be was
deems himself to be a part of nature, propelled by the laws of nature his question.
that wheels, when man grows with nature, all his activities have been The battle of Kurukshetra could be inter-preted consequently as
destroyed (IV. 19). Hence every action should be deemed as a yajna. an attempt at shattering all doubts with the sword of knowledge.
Knowledge impels one to understand oneself as a part of eternal The speaker describes himself as the seed of everything whatever
cycle and he is not troubled by the cravings of the senses. As we have in the existence (VII- 10). He is hidden from the eye through his maya
already seen such a person lets the senses feed on their objects of or illusion (VII- 25). Thus the speaker identifies himself with the fire
attraction. Let the eyes see, let the ears hear, let the nose smell, let the that hides in the smoke and with the foetus that hides in the placenta.
mouth eat, let the mind dream, let the heart breathe, let the tongue The speaker externalises himself and describes himself as the poet
speak non-sense, let the body excrete. Let the body have what it par excellence. This poet par excellence is the law giver. He is the
chooses. Let the eyes twinkle. But the person having these senses is primodial being. He is smaller than an atom. It is he who sustains
least influenced by them. He is like a drop of water on a leaf of lotus everyone. He is unthinkable. He is like the Sun beyond the sphere of
(V. 7-10). darkness (VIII- 9).
The self according to Bh. Gita resides in the body and the body In our sense perception days follow nights and nights follow days.
likens a city which has nine doors (V. 13). And one wonders whether The Sun rises in the east only to set in the west after the livelong day
the battle of Kurukshetra takes place in that city only. If the self can leaving the world to darkness. But here is a vision of a world alight
annihilate ignorance in that city, knowledge appears before him with beyond the sphere of darkness. That is a world where the Sun never
all the glory of the Sun (V- 16). sets.
The trldy wise is not at all distracted by the varied allurements of Once again the body has been likened to a house. The truly wise
the city. Their self burns like a lamp which does not tremble. The lamp has its doors shut. He confines his mind in the heart and chants Om
is as it were in a place where there is no wind (VI. 19). Or else in (VIII-12,13). Such a person is liberated from the body which has
other words the air is there tranquil. The mind likens the wind in its been likened to the house of sorrow (VIII- 15).
restlesnes (VI- 34). But the truly wise has his mind controlled. Earlier the wheel of in-exorable law that operates through the
The speaker distinguishes himself from his Prakiti or nature. He, eixtence has been referred to. It suggests the recurrance of birth and
however, speaks of two different aspects of his nature. One is apara- death of the self but the inexorable law could be also defied once one
Prakiti the other is para-Prakiti. The former is mundane whereas attains the speaker who is identified with truth and knowledge. In this
the latter is supra-mundane. Ths speaker calls them as yonis or the context the rotation of the wheel has been referred to (VIII. 16).
womb. It is these two wombs that hold the universe and yet every- There has been already a reference to night and day. What is night
thing in the universe is woven into the string that is the speaker himself, or day to man is quite different from the night and day to the creator.
just as the gems are woven into a thread (VII- 6 , 7). Once we closely Aeons constitute his night and aeons constitute his day. With the day-
read into the above two imageries. I, We find certain very significant break the creation begins. With the dusk of the creator the creation
things. Firstly, the multitudinlous particulars of this existence are not seems to wane and disappear (VIII-17,18, 19).
trifles but gems. They have been woven into a thread which is God. The speaker though very much existing in the contingent world of
So everything is hallowed here when looked upon as a gem adding ours, claims that his home is beyond the existence which is subject to
glory to God. Besides, God and God’s nature are different and yet creation and destructon. Once someone reaches there, he must not
the same. Because is not it that the Prakiti holds the gems? come back to the world of life and death. In other words the home of
Rhetoric of the Gitas 213 ... A Study of the GITAS in the Mahabharata
the speaker is a plane where neither life nor death can intrude (VIII. CHAPTER - XXX
21).
A person who is not aware of this plane beyond the sphere of
sorrow must sojourn along the road of death and samsara. Samsara DIFFERENT PLANES OF REALITY
is a highly suggestive word. It speaks of a plane where everything
eludes one’s grasp (IX. 3). Our contemporary science & philosophy seek to decode the
Be that as it may whatever is there in the everelusive sansara in- existence as it is. Physics or biology seeks to unlock the truths, if
cluding death are made up of the indeterminate and unmanifest stuff any, no matter, whether there is man to perceive it on not. But, the
that is the speaker (IX. 4). Thus the Bh. Gita contradicts itself over gitas put man first. The Hamsa Gita—na manusat Sresthataras he
and over again. The sojourner along the road of death is very much kincit. There is nothing superior to man. And gitas, deliberation on
the self of the indeterminate and eternal stuff. Death is not death when life & world begins with human perception of the same. The 2nd,
it is made of up of the stuff of the deathless. The speaker observes chapter of the Bhagavad gita clearly points out the different planes
that many of the seekers worship him kindling the fire of knowledge. of reality confronting man. Firstly there is the social reality where
Some others again worship him as their own self. Others again wor- mundane achievements are lauded and failures in the mundane
ship him as the other–their God (IX. 15). world are decried. Face to face with the battle at Kurukshetra,
Arjuna vacillates like a Shakespearean hero. To do or not to do is
his question. To fight or not to fight is his question. Krishna points
out that if he backs out from the war, they will decry him. Besides
Krishna points out that in this phenomenal world one need not
shrink from killing others or getting killed by others. This is simply
because of the fact that nothing remains forever in this world. That
which is doomed to die, can die any moment. Dying an hour before
or an hour later makes no difference.
Gatasunagatasumsca
Nanusocanti panditah
But, even if it were true, it is not human to think like that. Since
nothing is permanent in the world, is it at all wise to destroy the
world with nuclear bombs?
Well Krishna says that not a single molecule is destructible. This
he does not observe in the light of such theories that say that energy
is indestructible or the quantum of energy that is the existence is
constant. Krishna points out that everything unique that we find has
its uniqueness which is indestructible. Well, men may come & men
Different Planes of Reality 215 216 ... A Study of the GITAS in the Mahabharata
may go but man remains. Flowers bloom & flowers wither away. And of course there is a fifth plane referred to in the
But flower is indestructible. No Krishna does not posit the Bhagavadgita. Which is the plane of Krishna. Let us now observe
uniqueness as indestructible in that light. On the contrary, he points how Brahman has been dwelled on in the gitas. The third chapter
out that every flower is unique, every man is unique and every of the Gita say
kangaroo is unique. This uniqueness of a kangaroo is different from Karma brahmodbhavam viddhi
the Kangaroo. The uniqueness of a man is different from the man Brahmaksara samudbhutam
we perceive. The uniqueness puts on the varied shapes & forms. Tasmat sarvagatam Brahma
Nityam rajne pratisthitan.
The man or kangaroo that we perceive is not the man or the
What is Yajina is a motif to be dwelled on later. In the context of the
Kangaroo. It is the mask that its self has put on. Hence the world
Bh. Gita, the existence is agog with action. It is action. It is as it were
that we perceive—the world as it is, is a masquerade? The owners cosmic yajna or sacrifice. And the Brahman is present everywhere in
of these masks do not die. They doff and don their masks. the sacrifice. It is born of akshara or that which is indestructible. It is
Vasansi Jirnani yatha vihaya indestructible itself (C/o. Aksharam Paramam Brahma– Bh. G. Chapter
Navani grihnati naroparani VIII, 41).
Tatha Sarirani Vihaya jirna— This is not all. Brahman is every thing in the sacrifice.
Nyanyani samyati navani dete.
Brahmarpanam Brahma havi
Hence whether the masks are shattered in course of a fight or Brahmagnau Brahmana hutam.
on their own through old age or senility does not matter. That Brahmaiva tena gantavyam.
undying uniqueness that puts on the masks is known as Jivatman or Brahma Karma Samadhina.
individual soul. In other words, the individual souls exist and the Brahman is itself the oblation. Brahman is the butter poured into the fire.
Brahman itself is the fire. Brahman itself offers the oblation. Brahman is the
show of things are peopled with these myriads of souls. Thus there
destination of the oblation. Brahman is attained by one who performs the
is a third level of reality. act of sacrifice being absorbed in Brahman.
It does not change. But undergoes changes. Krishna describes Brahman as aksara or indestructible and
But Krishna speaks of a fourth level of reality. changeless as contrasted with kshara or changing. The world made
Avinashi to tad Viddhi of sky, earth, wind, water and fire is the kshara or the phenomenal
Yena Sarvamidam Hatam.
world which is subject to ceaseless change.
Know that as changeless with
which the panorama of existence But besides the kshara and akshara, two other categories are
is created. This is Brahman introduced in the Purusa which is adhidaivata, and Krishna himself
Clearly thus there are the following levels of reality who is adhiyajna.
1. Social Life Brahman is the single syllable OM Omityakasara Brahma (Ch 8-
2. Human Life 13)
3. Plane of the individual Soul On the surface, Krishna does not distinguish between, the
4. The Plane of the Brahman. Prakriti and Avyakta
Different Planes of Reality 217 218 ... A Study of the GITAS in the Mahabharata
Avyaktoksara it-yukta attributless. It is uncaused. I tell you how the Kshetrajna partakes
mahu paramam gatim. of the essence of Brahman or perhaps I cannot tell. The Brahmin
The unmanifest is the indestructible. It is the summum bonum for says that the Kshetrajna partakes of the Brahman who espies
every one. It is the goal. rightly. Others might look upon it as wisdom’s self.
Arjuna identifies Krishna as Brahman. This is a very ambiguous statement. It suggests that the same self
Param brahma paramdhama appears in two colours. To the ignorant it is the jivatman or the
Pavitram paramam bhavan
individual self that lingers though the body is subject to decay or
How come that the infinite and the indestructible could be a death . But with the wise it is the Brahman that exists in the form
mortal breathing through a limited frame of a human. Well the of Kshetrajna in every heart.
Almighty and Infinite could not be the Almighty and Infinite if it Whether the Kshetrajna is superior to Brahman or whether it
cannot incarnate in the finite. exists through Brahman remains unanswered. In the Brahmana Gita
Brahman is indeterminate, unmanifest, omnipresent, unthinkable Krishna introduces himself as the Kshtrajna.
secret, changeless and constant (Bh.G. Ch.-XII 3).
And surely Brahman which is beginningless as neither is nor is
not.
Anadimat param brahma na sat-asadasnute (Bh.G. Ch. 13)
The same Brahman has myriads of heads & feet. It enjoys all
sense objects & yet does not have any sense-organ. It exists
without & within in every being. It is indivisible and yet it appears
in fragments. It is the light of light & exists beyond the realm of
darkness.
The Brahman is the receptacle in which the seed is sown by
Krishna himself-Krishna the presiding spirit of sacrifice.
Thereby the creation is possible.
And the Brahman must be distinguished from the person who is
destroyed and the individual soul which lingers. It is the soul of the
souls (Ch. XV–16-17).
The Brahmani in the Anugita (Chapter XV, Sl-4) asks—
How is it that the Brahman which is indeteminate becomes the
Kshestrajna. The Kshetrajna exists through the Brahman. And yet
how could the Kshetrajna partake of the essence of Brahman.
The Brahmin in reply answers.- Brahman is indeterminate and
discourses taking place among super-human beings. The Hansa gita

CHAPTER - XXXI
is a fable. The Vritra gita harks back to a time when gods & demons
were engaged in mortal battle. The Vritra gita, revels in colour-sym-
THE GITAS COMPARED bolism to classify the different beings and things under the skies. It
Now that we have surveyed the gitas in the Mahabharata, we find focusses on the transmigration of soul and the theory of karma. The
a clear structure visible before our eyes that links them into a pattern. Harita gita is a collection of pithy & terse sayings on what frame of
Firstly unless it is the Sadja gita or the Srimad Bhagavad gita, all the mind one must attain, in order that one might renounce the world in
other gitas, are recollections of the inspired sayings of the past. For quest of bliss.
example, Bhisma recollects what Sanat Kumara had exhorted to the Bodhya gita revels in conundrums that are decoded by Bhisma.
demon Vritra, aeons back in Vritra gita. On another occasion, in re- They exhort us to abandon all hope & move about in the world all
sponse to the queries of Yudhisthira Bhisma, recounts what Harita, alone.
the sage had exhorted on the self-same question. Manki Gita, Hope is a recurrent theme in the gitas. Manky gita is autobiographi-
Vichakhnyu gita, Rishabha gita, Brahma gita, Hamsa gita–each one of cal. It dwells on how the personal experiences of the speaker proved
them is a recollection of inspired talks uttered in the past. Even Anugita that hopes stand in the way of man in his quest for bliss.
is recollection of the past. Here Krishna himself is the speaker. But he Hope is equally the theme of Rishabha gita. Here a King while a--
speaks the whole gita in the third persons. Either a Brahmin or a Siddha hunting was led to the digs of the sages. One of the sages then re-
or a guru or Brahma the creator, is the speaker there. May be Krishna counts, how a king had set out in quest of his lost son and reached a
projects himself in those characters or they are masks through which hermitage. There, in response to queries of a king, Krisha the sage
Krishna speaks. But Krishna here seems to recollect his emotions & par excellence exhorts that hope makes the world weak & feeble. It
thoughts that occured to him in the past. is the only block on the way of peace. The Rishabha gita is in its own
The two gitas that have been in course of the main action of the right a short story par excellence. The Sage Krisha here speaks being
Mahabharata are the Sadja gita & the Srimad Bhagavadgita. While wise from his own experiences in the worldly life. Ironically enough
Sadja gita is a debate among the five brothers viz the Pandavas and the prince that was lost had refused the sage earlier. This refusal taught
Vidura as to what should be the sunmum bonum of human life the the sage the right road to peace. Of course the prince had to pay for
Srimad Bhagavadgita is Krishna’s speech at the battle field of his rudeness. He was lost to the world. The sage Krisha however
Kurukshetra just at the moment the war starts. Krishna’s speech is conjured him back to worldly life. We do not know, however, what
recounted ad verbatim by Sanjaya at the court of King Dhritarastra. happened to the prince really, when he seemed to be lost to his par-
Sanjaya has television as well as tele-audition. ents or the world.
Curiously enough, though each one of the gitas is an inspired speech While Sadja gita is an interesting debate among six men, the
by a sage mind (Vidura of Sadanga gita should be deemed as a sage) Parasara gita is deliberation on a number of themes like the inevitabil-
or by Krishna the god-incarnate, each one of the gitas is unique in its ity of reaping one’s actions, the benefits of good manners the station
style and thoughts. For example the Vritra gita or the Hamsa gita, are & duties of men, the efficacy of penence & ahimsa & many other
The Gitas Compared 221 222 ... A Study of the GITAS in the Mahabharata
sundry topics related to the dos & donts for man. The Hamsa gita is a Thus the variation among the gitas are wide. While the shorter
fable. Here the creator in the shape of a swan exhorts as to the secret gitas, dwell on a single theme in the main. (The Bamadeva gita, or
of human bondage & how to get rid of the same. Thereby Hamsa gita Brahma gita for example dwells on the duties of a king) the Anugita or
dwells on the ideal way of life. the Srimad Bhagavad gita or the Parasara gita compasses a wide
Anu gita is a master piece in its own right. It is a montage of appar- range of themes in their own way.
ently discrete dialogues, between a Siddha and his disciple Kasyapa, And of course, all these gitas shine like satellites centring around
between a Brahmin and his wife, between mind & the senses, be- the Srimad Bhagavad Gita. And since, most of the gitas, were told
tween the personified different aspects of our in-haling & exhaling of earlier than the Srimad Bhagavad Gita, all the earlier gitas seem to
air and so on. It also recounts the speech of Brahma the creator. Thus merge in the Shrimad Bhagavad Gita just as rivers merge into the sea.
the Anu gita is a wonderful collage of numerous paroles that touch Curiously enough though Srimad Bhagavad gita was told last, in point
upon myriads of themes from creation itself down to the do’s & donts of time & it is an organic part of the main action of the Mahabharata,
of every man in the society in search of happiness. While Brahma other gitas have been recounted only after the Srimad Bhagavad Gita
dwells on the three gunas, the creation of Mahat, ahankara & the five is spoken in course of the action. Thus the gitas other than Srimad
senses the field or the Kshetra & the knower of the field, the evanes- Bhagavadgita recounted at later time than the Bhagavadgita impel the
cence of the world, the wheel of time & so on, from a cosmic per- reader from time to time to dwell on the different themes of the
spective, the Brahmana speaks from the point of human existence. Bhagavadgita in retrospect.
The Brahmana’s speech touches upon a whole range of themes in Thus a wonderful tension has been created between the clock-
such as the world as a mighty forest or life as a grand sacrifice & so time & the narrative time.
on. Often the Brahmana touches upon the themes that Brahma touches It is interesting to note further that the Srimad Bhagavad Gita is an
upon from a different perspective. Besides the Brahmana’s speech organic part of the main action of the Mahabharata. When Arjuna all
quotes dialogues taking place on different planes among gods and of a sudden drops his bow & arrow & says that he will not participate
sages and snakes and so on. The author of the Mahabharata as a in the war it is a case of peripeti or complete reversal of the tendency
narrator, prefers showing than telling. Hence such episodes like that of action. If Arjuna really gave up fighting there would be a walk over
Parasurama & Kartaviryarjuna or that of Alarka seem to take place for the Kauravas. The Pandavas, one & all, would be butchered.
before our eyes. We have a direct experience of them. Because, all the great warriors, next only to Arjuna, were in the
Srimad Bhagavad gita is however, addressed to Arjuna. Kaurava ranks. Krishna’s speech-the Srimad Bhagavad gita saved
Krishna--the god-incarnate is the speaker. Krishna the speaker in the situation on behalf of the Pandavas. On the contrary no other gita
Anugita is not omniscient. He recounts discourses on different issues has any such direct link with the main action of the story of the
that took place earlier. In the Srimad Bhagavad gita, however, Krishna Mahabharata. So their only function is either to foreshadow the
does not refer to any one else to support his ideas. He is in his omni- Bhagavad Gita or to remind one of the Bhagavad Gita.
scient self & speaks on everything that pertains to life & the world, in In other words, when we read the gitas, taken together, we could
his own parole. And every word of his, is authentically his own. read them in two ways. One way could be, to read the gitas other
than the Srimad-Bhagavad Gita as the preludes to the latter or else myriads of hands & feet, the Purusha who is time itself flashes before
one could read them as the reminders of the latter. our eyes in all his dynamicity. Time past, time future become eternal
Now if we read the other gitas as preludes to the Bhagavad Gita, present. Creation, preservation & destruction of myriads of worlds
we find the following salient features. have been telescoped in the eleventh canto of the Bhagavad Gita. It is
Firstly, the Vritra gita gives us a vision of the ineffable Vishnu, with time and again. But there is more to it. Krishna, the human being
grey beard. Sanatkumara testifies that the whole existence lives in becomes the myriad headed & myriad handed purusa. The myriad
Vishnu only. Vishnu is the world, and Visnu feeds on the world. Bhisma headed & myriad handed purusa appears in the being of mortal
says that Krishna is the incarnation of Visnu’s crown or turya-amsa. Krishna. Thus Krishna deconstructs the purusa & the purusa
The Vritra gita also refers to time that devours up everything. deconstructs the man Krishna. The world is in the man & yet the man
The Vichakhnyu gita points out that it is Visnu only who, is the is in the world. This is a site in the Mahabharata where logic & man’s
object of worship in every sacrifice whatever. The Brahmana gita ch. reason fail to hold out. Hence, when Mm. Ananta Thakur, says that
VI confirms the view. The Parasara gita observes that Visnu maintains the message of the Bhagavad Gita is spread all over the Mahabharata
the world. in the guise of different gitas, he is true & yet he is not true. Because,
The Anu gita refers to the purusa with myriads of legs & hands & the appocalyptic vision that we experience in the Srimad Bhagavadgita
eyes in every direction (A.G- IV,49). canto XI can hardly be guessed or imagined, if we keep aside the
Besides, the inscrutable reality, which is ineffable seems to serve Bhagavad Gita & read the other gitas. The experience of the purusa
as the a priori background of the disccourses in the Parasara gita & seems to animate the a priori premise of the other gitas. Here is a
Anu gita & in almost every gita as such either explicitly & or implicitly. vision of the truth or the reality which other gitas seek to evoke in our
The Srimad Bhagavad Gita seems to be the voice of this very Visnu, mind. There are thousands of descriptions of the Niagra falls. They
or the great Purusa who has donned human shape. Thus while all the will naturally differ from one another. But they are no substitute for the
other gitas evoke curiosity as to the god--head, call it Visnu or Krishna. experiencing of the Niagra falls with one’s eyes & ears. True that if
Krishna himself appears in mortal frame & speaks in the Srimad there are two visitors to Niagra, they will not experience Niagra in the
Bhagavad Gita. Thus here is the apotheosis of all the gitas indeed. same way. Each one will have his own Niagra, no doubt. Similarly the
While the other gitas seem to speak of life & universe in different pisgah vision in the eleventh canto of the Bhagavad Gita will be per-
aspects only, Krishna’s speech at the battlefield seems to look upon ceived by each viewer or reader in his own way. For instance in the
the reality steadily & as a whole. In his speech all the different aspects Gita itself, while Arjuna is terrified & awe—struck at the sight of Purusa
of the revealed truths as testified in the other gitas remain through their in man & of man in the purusa. Sanjaya another viewer is tranquil. His
differences and yet seem to be woven into a whole. description of the purusa is loaded with the recurrent word divya or
But the whole is never the aggregate of its parts. The whole is divine. Besides it is all light, brighter than thousand suns. It strikes awe
always something more than its parts. True, Vritragita gives us a glimpse in us, but it does not strike terror unlike Arjuna’s description of the
of Visnu. But, it finds its crown in the eleventh canto of the cosmic purusa in man.
Bhagavadgita. Here Visnu is no more a vision. The Purusha having Mahamahopadhyaya Ananta Thakur is, however, right that the
messages of the other gitas are indeed summed up in the Srimad some underground harmony hidden from the eye.
Bhagavad Gita. Almost every theme such as purusa prakriti brahman, For example, Vichakhnyu gita thunders against the slaughter of
triguna, individual soul, transmigration, the four castes & their duties, animals even at the altar of sacrifice. On the other hand, true that
the four stages of life, the four goals of man, the individual soul & its Krishna goads Arjuna to war. But over & over again he uses war as a
relation with the reality, the different planes, of reality yajna,—that metaphor. He asks Arjuna to butcher ignorance with the sword of
have been dwelled on either in this gita or in that gita, recurs in Srimad knowledge. He asks Arjuna to fight the enemies called desire. Thus
Bhagavad Gita, and surely they have been welded into a pattern. there is always a tension between the varied meanings of war in the
But this does not mean, that the messages of all these gitas are the Srimad Bhagavad Gita.
same. They are not always the same. Each gita, even though has affin- Still why do these gitas differ from each other on the surface? We
ity to other gitas in their intuitive knowledge of the ineffable reality can easily account for these differences when we remember the
behind the show of things, each gita is unique through its difference addressors, the addressees, & the contexts in which the gitas have
from other gitas. been sung.
For example, while the Vichakhnyu gita debunks every kind of That the context always determines a speech, is amply shown in
violence Krishna in Srimad Bhagavad Gita has a different view alto- the Anugita. When, Arjuna asks Krishna to repeat what he said at the
gether. He does not say merely that when war is a must, it is a must. battlefield, Krishna declines. Because, the context of the Srimad
He goes to the length of saying that war opens up the heaven’s gates Bhagavad Gita no longer exists.
for the warring class. Vichakhnu gita opens with a horrid spectre of The context is of two kinds viz. material & linguistic. By material
slaughtered cows here & there. Deos it not remind one of horrors of context we mean the physical context in the course of the action in
war. Srimad Bhagavadgita opens with Arjuna’s sharp attack on war. which a gita has been sung. But by linguistic context we mean the
But, it has not been a mere theoretical denunciation of war on the part query, in the context of which the gita has been sung.
of Arjuna. Here the horrors of the impending war has been seen Well, while all the other gitas have been recounted in times of peace,
through a personality. Hence it is all poetry and known as the laments Srimad Bhagavad Gita has been spoken in the face of impending war.
of Arjuna. Unlike the Srimad Bhagavad Gita, most of the gitas are recounted,
While the Manky gita, Sampaka gita, Bodhya gita and the like when the battle of Kurukshetra has been lost & won, when the
prescribe renunciation, Krishna, asks them to live in the world. One massmassacre at Kurukshetra has been complete.
must act, act, in the living present without any expectation as such in Arjuna’s question, at the battle-field of Kurukshetra is regarding
the contingent. One has the right to work because one cannot but whether to fight or not.
work. But, according to Krishna, one has no right to realising the Arjuna’s query at the battle-field of Kurukshetra is whether to act
fruitions of one’s work. The Rishabha gita denounces hope. So does or not. He is already there in the battle-field. And should he give up
Bodhya gita. Krishna observes that one must act because act one arms in the face of raging war which has just begun?
must, but one must not hope for any reward for the act. Yudhisthira’s queries are on the contrary different. They are—
Thus the gitas, differ from each other & yet they seem to have How to get rid of births & deaths? (Vritra gita) How to build up
oneself so that one could attain eternal bliss (Harit gita) What happens Bhisma, the addressor speaks while resting on a bed of shafts or
to man if he is engrossed with wealth (Manky gita). How do happi- arrows. He is a vanquished hero at the battle. But no one can kill him.
ness & misery come to man (Sampaka gita). He can die only at his will. He is waiting for the auspicious hour of
What actions in this world lead one to the attainment of the ideal in death to come. And it is he who advises Yudhisthira on the dos &
this life as well as in the life hereafter? (Parasara gita) donts of life & road to freedom at the instance of Yudhisthira himself.
They speak highly of speaking truth, self-control, having mercy on Bhisma’s speeches are the speeches of a man, who has lived long &
others & wisdom. Are they really important? (Hamsa gita). now who is ready to die. The view of a man, who drank deep in the
The queries of Yudhisthira are thus more theoretical. He wants to fountain of life and who readily goes to death with no foreboding or
know the dos & donts of life whereby man attains peace in life & life fear, is singularly interesting.
hereafter. And of course it is an addressee who determines the speech of an
The theme of discussion in Sadja gita revolves round what should addressor. In Srimad Bhagavad Gita Arjuna is the addressee. He is
be the object of human life. the greatest hero at the battle-field. All of a sudden he drops his bow
and says that he will not fight. He does not fear to lose his own life.
In the case of Anu gita, Arjuna asks Krishna to retell the Srimad But his baleful eyes are full of tears, at the imaginings of the horrors of
Bhagavad Gita in times of peace. But in a changed context. Krishna war and their effect on the society. He is at the rock-bottom of de-
fails to do so. Instead he speaks a different gita which is known as spair and he needs a revelation. Krishna stands up to the situation and
Anugita. Anugita also dwells on metaphysical and worldly issues only sings the Srimad Bhagavadgita, that bursts into revelation accompa-
to inform Arjuna’s mind about the truth of the existence. nied by paens of admiration from Arjuna and Sanjaya. Finally the
Thus, while all the other gitas seek to inform the mind, the Srimad song is wound off with metaphysical discourse as a sequel to the rev-
Bhagavad gita impels Arjuna to act. Hence there is a qualitative differ- elation.
ence between Srimad Bhagavat gita & other gitas. In the Anu gita the same Arjuna is the addressee. But he is no
The addressers are also different. Krishna who speaks the longer in the role of a warrior. His query is not concerned with any life
Bhagavadgita is the charioteer of Arjuna the hero of heroes. On the and death question. Hence Krishna’s speech in the Anu gita does not
worldly plane a charioteer always acts at the biddings of the hero who climb the heights of revelation that we experience in Srimad Bhagavad
rides the chariot. On another plane however, it is the charioteer at gita.
whose biddings, the chariot as well as its rider should behave. Krishna Yudhisthira is preoccupied with dharms. Hence his queries are
the charioteer exhorts Arjuna the rider of the chariot at Kurukshetra more impersonal. And Bhisma’s speeches have been that of a wise
during the wake of war. The Srimad Bhagavadgita is a call to arms teacher. On the other hand, Krishna in the Srimad Bhagavad Gita is
indeed, seen on this plane. beyond himself while speaking. He is more than a teacher there. He
The war over, the same Krishna, in the role of a friend & brother, calls Arjuna as his most intimate friend. He tells Arjuna that he is Arjuna
exhorts Arjuna as to the riddles of the existence. and Arjuna is he; the addresser & addressee merge. The world & the
Thus, when a man puts on different roles, he speaks differently. purusa merge. The self & non-self merge. And yet they are two, the
The Gitas Compared 229 ... A Study of the GITAS in the Mahabharata
addresser & the addressee, the self & the non-self and the purusa and CHAPTER - XXXII
the world.
Thus the Srimad Bhagavad Gita stands out as a singular song which
seems to come out from the very heart of the existence both MESSAGE OF THE GITAS I
phenomanal & noumenal and comprehends the whole. The other gitas, As we have already seen the gitas littered here and there in the
though many of them told earlier, throw light only on aspects of the vast wilderness of countless narratives that is the Mahabharata is in
same. And surely the whole is always greater than the sum--total of its a sense organically related with the epic. They are like the skies that
parts. Hence if the Srimad Bhagavadgita were not there, we could not occasionally peep into the leaf fringed forest and give us the glimpse
reconstruct it from the other gitas. of the reality that baffles language and descriptions.
But When Mm. Ananta Thakur asserts—get rid of the Srimad But perhaps the significance of the gitas goes deeper. They have
Bhagavad Gita; still we could reconstruct them from the other gitas an uncanny grasp over what human life is, what are his objects
scattered through the pages of the Mahabharata, he is very true, though when he is in the society and what human society is like.
not in the literal sense. He points out that the message of the Srimad Every man has to pass through four stages or four seasons of
Bhagavad Gita is not an interpolation in the Mahabharata. The other human life. They are roughly childhood, adolescence and youth,
gitas throw light only on some spects of the reality. They always evoke old-age and beyond that. This is the lot of man everywhere under
in the reader the curiosity to know the reality as a whole. And hence the sun. Shakespeare and Keats also divided human life into similar
the speech of Krishna that comprehends all the possible aspects of stages.
life is always a demand on the part of the reader. The whole action of In our country as such childhood and old age have been deter-
the Mahabharata calls for a kind of revelation that might resolve the mined by law. When they say there should be no child labourer or
contradictions. Even if the other gitas are read after the Srimad no child marriage or child abuse they determine the time-span of
Bhagavadgita, they help us to ruminate on what Krishna Bhagavan childhood. Once again, the govt. has defined the retirement age for
told at the outset of the battle of Kurukshetra. its employees. Thus the time-span of youth and middle age has been
also determined. A human life cannot be conceived of without man
being in the society. No wonder, therefore that childhood and ado-
lescence as well as the middle age entail with them their corre-
sponding duties. Without performing these duties man cannot live in
this society. Hence these duties are rather the rights of man to
survive in the society. In our materialistic world today we prepare
ourselves in childhood and adolescence so that we could join in the
rat-race for survival in the middle age of life. It is during this period
of time that we marry and beget children. We have our family
responsibilities. To shoulder such responsibilities we need money.
Message of the Gitas I 231 232 ... A Study of the GITAS in the Mahabharata
To earn money we have to join in some economic activity. The sole it the proper nyasa or placement of the worldly desires that are
aim of our education system has been to build ourselves up for associated with the zest for life. In Western literature also we find
participating in the economic activity. The society to-day however the echo of similar thoughts. King Lear wants to crawl to death
does not take into account the responsibilities of the old age. Hence unburdened. Hence he wants to settle his kingdom on his heirs.
ageism has now become a problem that the society faces. The old Prospero flings his magic wand into the depths of the waters and
people thrown away from livelihood are real sufferers. The society says that hence-forth his every third thought will be grave. But
is not mature enough to enrich itself from the experience of age. Be unlike any culture in any society in the world, the ancient Indian
that as it may, the truth of the four stages of human life has been culture looked upon the four stages of man as a whole and sought
taken into account by the gitas and the ancient Indian thought. On to prepare man in this light. This implies chaturasrama. The ideals
the contrary the society today doesnot have any comprehensive of the chaturasrama have been dwelled on elaborately in the
view as to the four stages of life. Gitas look upon life steadily and speeches of Madalasa in Markandeya Purana. The gitas do not
as a whole and put forward an integrated view of life. Gitas take dwell on them directly. But when they talk of the duties of a child
into account the reality of death. In the childhood itself they simul- or the duties of a house holder, they take chaturasrama for granted.
taneously teach the child the means of livelihood as well as the When the Parasara Gita Chapter-III sloka-9 says that every man
transitoriness of life. Then the child passes through the youth and is born with a priori indebtedness to gods, to relatives, to guests and
participates in the economic activity of the worldly life. Finally the to one’s self, it points out that no man is born free. Since we are
age of his retirement comes. The old men in the materialistic world born in the society, we are born with a priori indebtedness to the
today seem to have no end in view. Thrown away from the eco- society and its prevalent culture. When the Parasara Gita says that
nomic activity they all of a sudden discover that they are alienated one’s duty is to pay back the creditors, it chiefly underlines the
from the society. But the ancient Indian thought as embodied in the duties of a man as a householder.
gitas prescribes the old men to embrace the alienation suo motu. Man in the society has always four goals to pursue. He needs
How could they face alienation? Well they have done their part to foods and clothes. Or else he cannot live. This impels him to eco-
help their families and the neighbours–when they were young men. nomic activity. He needs sex. That is his biological activity. But
Now they must give up their small world in quest of the larger world society will never allow one to have food and sex in a reckless
or Vana. In this stage of life, they should continuously meditate of manner. Man is different from other animals. In case of many
the well being of all things great and small in the universe. Earlier animals and birds, there is a mating season. But every time is tea
also their education taught them to cherish altruistic ideas. But their time for man and he can have sex more frequently than the animals
family responsibilities stood in the way. Now that the family respon- in general. So if these biological impulses are let loose untrammelled
sibilities have been clinched up, they are no longer with their the society will go out of joints. If the society does not exist, man
families; they now belong to the world. At the same time they will can not survive. Hence certain laws have to be observed so that the
meditate on death. Man is born to die only. The true heroic of a individual and the society both could survive. These laws could be
man lies in how he faces death. The readiness for death entails with called the dharma. Thus every society whatever sets the three goals
Message of the Gitas I 233 234 ... A Study of the GITAS in the Mahabharata
for every man in dharma, artha and kama. Unless artha and kama So Karl Marx envisions a world rid of exploitation. In that
are controlled by dharma, they go to shatter the society. So in every communist state of civilisation man will be warring with Nature–he
society whatever, an individual has to inculcate some or other kinds posits. Nature is within and without. Human nature is itself to be
of self-restraint. The self-restraint of man is his dharma. If we ever conquered and there once again the philosophy of Dr. Freud is
deviate from the same the general will in the shape of society or relevent. Marx thinks in terms of the society. He thinks that
state imposes social control on him. Thus positive law and unless the social force is sufficiently changed, man’s quest for the
punishment are the epiphenomenon of man’s urge for self-restrain. infinitude can never be fulfilled. But Freud points out that every
And they are the manifestation of dharma indeed. In fact artha and individual must help himself sublimating his unconscious. Thus
kama cannot be imagined without dharma. Neither economic while one focuses on the individual the other focuses on society.
activity is possible when man is left alone. In an island where Ancient Indian thought and the gitas on the other hand take both
Alexander Selkirk rules supreme and where no second man inhabits individual and the society into account. And it pins on the fact
no mating is also possible there. So for the gratification of sex and that every man is born with his a priori inclinations even in a so-
hunger society is sine qua non with man’s existence. Hence social called uncongenial society. So men could aspire towards absolute
control will be imposed on man in the need of man only. Man loves freedom from every bondage–even from the bondage of sex life and
himself and at the same time he loves the society. The conflicting economic activity, even from the bondage of dharma. In every
values of altruism and egoism is resolved in dharma. Modern society whatever there have been people who renounced the world.
thinkers have devoted lot of their energies to dwell on whether sex President Roosevelt deserted America for Afric shores. The young
or economic activity is at the foundation of the society. While Freud, French poet Rimbaud left poetry once for all. Hence this urge for
the Austrian psychologist underlines libido as the impelling force getting rid from the bonds of life is also universal. Or else, why
behind human activity, Karl Marx the German jew emphasised that should there be the quest for democracy and liberalism and laissez
economic force propelled history. The same debate has been faire economy. Everywhere law is the condition of liberty and yet
properly handled in the Sadanga Gita. Both Marx and Freud the urge for liberty often goads man to go further and renounce life.
pondered over how these a priori inclinations of man could be Ancient Indian world view and the gitas prescribe the cultivation of
sublimated. Freud as a psycho-analyst dwells on how, the cravings the culture of renunciation in the third stage of life. The renunciation
of the Id that lurks in the wilderness of unconscious could be must imply the renunciation of ego. Compassion for the whole
sublimated Marx also showed how an ideal society could be forged existence naturally follows. Then it seems to man that everything is
on the basis of equal distribution of wealth. His watch-word was- right with the world and he abandons all hope. He pays the world
everybody according to his need. Thus neither of them could its dues that is sannyas and he is ready to meet death. Thus
discard dharma in their discourses. Both of them are rather partial dharma, artha, kama all together lead man to surpass them. And his
in their views of life. Ancient Indian social psychology as put for- urge for moksha or liberation is also a facet of dharma. Thus
ward by the gitas however take into account all the three in dharma, according to ancient Indian thought and the gitas, is a bull
dharma, artha and kama. And besides that they add a fourth with four legs in dharma, artha, kama and moksa.
dimension to the goal of man. No man can be enough materialist.
CHAPTER - XXXIII who rule the state accordingly. They are the hands of the society.
There will be people who will add to the wealth of society by way of
exchange between one society and another. Besides there will be the
MESSAGE OF THE GITAS II
producers of wealth. Even if as Marx conceived, states were abol-
Every society has its hierarchy. There are engineers and doctors ished and even if there were the Federation of the World and the
and professors, labourers, cultivators, scavengers, politicians, police Parliament of man, no one can abolish the difference among many
in the society to-day. In the primitive society also there is hierarchy societies. Just as the earth could not be made one uniform flat land,
along similar lines. Broadly speaking such hierarchies are founded on there will always be the land and sea, the hills and the dales, the stars
the function of different classes of people. When Marx says that there and the earth. If the environment itself were abolished, the creation
should be a classless society, he posits that there should be no rich would be destroyed. The ancient India and the gitas perceived it as an
men or poor men in the society. But in any society whatever the differ- obvious fact. Hence Krishna says that I have created the four castes
ent functions viz. that of a teacher or that of a doctor will exist. And and yet I have not created it.
one’s activities often determine one’s outlook. So in the same society This serves us the basis of caste system. There are brahmins who
it is apt that there should be different classes. If there were no such give the language to the society. There are Kshatras who protect the
different classes, the society will cease to exist. When Marx posits law and the order of the society. There are Vaisyas who revel in the
that in the ideal society everybody must get according to his need, production system of the society and there are sudras who help all the
there would be difference in the possessions of men belonging to dif- three classes in their activity.
ferent occupations. While a college teacher will need a big library Since Renaissance in Europe, the notion of humanism has come to
according to his need, a merchant must need to possess ships and the foreground in the of human thought. Man, they said, is the crown
store-houses. Very naturally there will be difference in the riches of and coping stone of the creation. So does the Mahabharata and the
persons of respective occupations. Therefore Marx actually pointed Hansa Gita assert repeatedly. M.M. Ananta Thakur points out that
out that in his utopia there will be no awareness as to the difference in the message of the Mahabharata and the gitas are embodied in the
personal possession. No one will be jealous of an administrator who phrase :
owns a helicopter to survey a whole region that he governs. A teacher Na manusat sresthataram hi kincit
will walk down to his school. At best he may ask for a bicycle. He will And there has been the concept of Man that consists of the whole
not need a car. Because servicing a car every three months will tell mankind as such. It is the Virat Purusa as envisioned in the Vedas.
upon his supply of time.Instead of wasting his time for the car, he Brahmins are its month. Every one from Buddha down to Socrates,
could meditate on issues of more crucial importance to him than that Milarepa, Jallauddin Rumi and Bertand Russel belong to this class.
of the breakdown of the car. In other words Marx would also have to The hands are Kshatriyas. Every one including Alexander, Chengis
consent to the notion of station and duties. Broadly speaking in every and Timur and Napoleon belongs to this caste. Chand Sadagar and
society whatever there is some one who gives the language. They are Henry Ford belong to the class of Vaisyas who constitute the thighs of
the philosophers, economists, scientists, jurists. There are also people the Purusa whereas the engineers and the labourers belong to the
Message of the Gitas II 237 238 ... A Study of the GITAS in the Mahabharata
class of the sudras. This is a queer situation. That is, in the society of the Mahabharata
Perhaps no one has any dispute with this thesis. but the ancient patriachal system and matriarchal system co-mingle. Be that as it may
Indian society and the gitas made these classes hereditary. That is, Vidura or the Khatta though being a sudra is allotted the highest posi-
each class has its own duties and corresponding privileges. This will tion of a philosopher. Thus the non-brahmins could also give language.
devolve unto the children and the grand-children of each class. This If the brahmins are deemed as the elite in India, despite the caste-
has been singularly distasteful for the Western thinkers. In England system, the society is capable of the circulation of the elite. For ex-
kingship is hereditary. In the West also the off-springs of the rich are ample in the middle ages there was one great saint in Kabir. He was a
rich. But exceptions are there. Under no social system, there has been weaver by birth. But he is greatly acclaimed as a godman all men all
equal opportunity for every body. But this is not all. Since in the West over the country in India irrepective of caste and creed. Such in-
every one lamented for this man’s scope and that man’s talent, they stances can be multiplied. The Parasara Gita points
cried for fair field and no favour. Hence they found the caste system out :
singularly dehumanising. Because it defines the station and duties of a a sudra also could be a godman if he is in touch of a philosopher.
man as soon as he is born. This was due to the fact that the western Yathodayagiran dravyam sannikarsena dipyate totha sat-
science influenced by Darwin felt that there is no truth in heredity. The sannikarsena hinavaruopi dipyate.
theory of Mendel remained unattended to. But in the 1930s Weissmann Since Indian society has been capable of the circulation of the elite,
and Devvries pointed out that there is truth in the notion of heredity. Indian society has never undergone any revolution like the French
Of late researches in the fields of genetics show that much depends on Revolution or the Russian Revolution that have been witnessed in the
heredity. However it is a myth that a brahmin’s child should be taught West. Let change come as it may, still there has been a kind of social
in the lore of brahmin and a bureaucrat’s child should be taught the art ethos in India since the days of the Vedas till date that is found no-
of bureahucracy. Caste system has never been that rigid through-out where else in the world.
the history of the country. In the Mahabharata Dronacharyya a Thus the Gitas and the ancient Indian society found what was natural
brahmin, is a great warrior. It has been pointed out in the Parasara in the society and they legitimated them by making codes. Thus since
Gita that impelled by the economic exigency, a brahmin could choose the brahmin gives the language, he should be taught in the art of lan-
some other occupation than the brahmin’s own. guage. He should be taught the scriptures so that the language he
Once again the highest voice in the Mahabharata is that of Krishna. gives is imbued with an altriuistic attitude. The Kshatriyas conduct the
Bhishma is also one of the greatest philosophers in the world of the body politic in the light of that language. They should know the impor-
Mahabharata. All the gitas under study are either quoted by Bhisma tance of the philosophers as well as the merchants & the producers
or spoken or quoted by Krishna. Both are Ksatriyas. Besides there is and of the service sector. From here emerges the raja-dharma.
a third philosopher in the Mahabharata. He is Vidura. Vidura figures Rajadharma has been dwelled on in the Utathya Gita and the Bamadeva
in the Sadanga Gita. Vidura has not been acknowledged as a Kshatriya. Gita. There it has been pointed out that the possession of those who
Because he is born of a Sudra woman. So when a brahmin is used as are rich by fraud should be confiscated by the state and distributed
a deputy to beget children, the children retain their mother’s caste. among the poor. But this must not be confused with the so-called
Robinhoodism of the welfare State of today. The Rajadharma sees to social wealth. Actually when we spend the whole of our income to
that there are really rich merchants in the state who produce through meet up our liabilities we do not add anything to our assets. When our
honest exchange. Because state must not stand in the way of individual’s assets wear out, our income also dwindles. And the chief liability of a
spirit of enterprise or entrepreneurship. The merchant should do his man is his pride and ego. When we spend money for status symbols,
job and the service sector should do its job. The Parasara Gita points we waste our assets. And an economy based on expenditure as it is in
out that when men do their job according to their station, they are all America or Singapore to-day is foredoomed to die. Practically we
honourable : earn to consume as well as to give away. Along with dana, there must
amena sobhate viprah Ksatrya vijina to be eating. Eating could be understood as consumption. The Bh.G.
dhanena vaisyah sudrastu nityam daksyena sobhate points out the three different kinds of consumption. Some are all for
(Ch-IV, 21) consumption of exotic things for example TV, Video Camera & simi-
In other words in the ideal society as such depicted by the gitas, lar other kinds which do not have any use value for most of us. We
everyone should respect his fellowmen irrespective of his caste and buy them to enhance our status value. Neither Marx nor any social
creed. thinker can admit of it. The Bh.G says that such wastages are re-
flected only due to rajasika attitude.
But such a society is neither found in the Mahabharata nor in any The Bh.G, however, points out that these three attitudes are in
time and any period of the history of man that we know. Deviations hermony with the three gunas that constitute the world. Thus the Bh.G
from the ideal is always there. Every kind of social act could be per- over and over again emphasises that man is but a part of nature. The
formed largely by three different types of action. There are four kinds gitas find no harm in the diversities of attitude. If a ruler is angry with a
of social act in eating, tapsya, yajna and dana. In the larger sense of person who breaks the law, he is not wrong. But if anyone else being
the term tapsya could be termed as the efforts of an individual to angry takes the law in hand, he is in the wrong. But what happens is
acquire something, be it spiritual or material. Because in the eyes of this that the right attitude at the right situation is not always found.
the Bh. Gita, the difference between the spirit and the matter is func- Hence there is dysfunction in the society.
tional and not real. Because matter is always informed by the spirit. According to the gitas, people are born with such attitudes a priori.
Matter can not exist without spirit. Matter is itself spirit. And spirit is True that on the surface they are hereditary. Hence a brahmin child
always matter. May be the spirit is also that kind of matter which was has a priori more of sattva guna in him. But just as the three gunas
never born to die. So tapasya to repeat is an effort of an individual to exist in every thing in nature, so do they exist in every man. Only thing
acquire something. Then this energy is spent in yajna. Yajna can be is that a brahmin child has the sattva guna dominant and raja and
construed as a social activity whereby wealth is produced. And it is tama subdued. But no man is a monad with its eyes and ears closed
followed by dana, which implies cash flow. That is the wealth is spent. to the world and the society. The society has different opportunities
In the 17th chapter of the Bh.G. the three different attitudes in the and the latter might fan to the foreground the raja or tama or both in
performance of such acts have been elaborately delineated. Those a brahmin child.
who perform these acts in pride, and in self interest do not add to the The law of causality as put forward by the gitas is very very com-
plicated. Our common sense view of the world distinguishes between by an arbitrary ruler.
self and the non-self matter and mind, nature and man. Along the self The true liberation with the Gitas is nirbana where the vagaries of
same line the gitas distinguish between the individual soul and the indi- life and the society lose their hold upon one’s consciousness. And the
vidual. The individual’s aspirations in this life goad the individual soul gitas not only seek to prepare a man to become an ideal member of
from one birth to another. The individual soul or jivatma could be a the society but also it wants every journeyman who walks along the
king in this life and a priest in another life and a clown in the third life road of life towards nirvana. Whether nirvana is at all true or false is
only impelled by his attitude and way of karma in life here in this a different question al-together to be deliberated on by the philosopers
world. & mystics. But the myth has enlarged our vision and horizon.
Now the gitas exhort that every man should live in the light of this
knowledge and perform his duties as per his station without any hope In the light of this myth, the gitas address our individual conscious-
for fruition. That is, the Gitas ask us not to pouder over the possible ness and remind us that we are neither body nor mind, nor the senses.
consequences of our acts. This is known as Karmaphala tyaga. But The body mind and the senses have their own cravings. Because they
this is karmaphala tyaga only in the contingent. So that we could reap are part of the nature. Nature has its own crarings. Let them be ful-
our karma in our lives to come. So that we could climb higher still and filled-if fulfilment comes. But one’s conciousness must not be involved
higher the blue deep till we meet with our real self—the infinitude and with it. Only then one is wise.
merge into it.
The gitas over and over again say that we are not minds, we are The gitas do not impose upon men certain dos and donts. they do
not bodies, we are souls that put on mind and body. So death is not ask us to restrain our senses. But once one does not get involved
nothing but change in the course of the soul’s sojourn along the road with the senses, restraint of senses will come upon him on its own.
of life. But ultimately none-not even the gitas can think beyond death. Bramhacharya does not mean celibacy. It means mentally living in
The gitas say that the death of the bodies is not enough; the mirvana is Bramha though physically one must sojourn in the mundane world.
all in all. Nirvana means the extinctions of our desires and union of The gitas ask us to look upon every human activity and social activity
our souls–with the indeterminate reality. as a part of the cycle of nature :
Every society ancient or modern has its myths. The gitas have set The sense of identity with nature is singularly refreshing to the
certain myths which are more subtle than any other and which are civilisation to-day. Every day we are getting away from nature under
larger in compass than any other. Roussean points out that man is the impact of science and technology and emergent egoistic values.
born free and everywhere he is in chains. But the gitas wonders that Could we inculcate the myth of the gitas, we would not have de-
how come that man is born free. He is a bondsman of his body and stroyed the environment only to make our lives impossible.
the five senses. This bondage he has acquired through his habits of But the gitas do not have one prescription for every body. There
longing through the different births and deaths. As soon as he belongs are men with different inclinations and different a priori attitudes. For
to the society, he is a bondman who must obey the laws of the society. each one of them different mode of thinking has been prescribed. For
No matter whether they are decreed upon man by the General Will or those who are intellectually prone have Jnana-yoga for them to pur-
Message of the Gitas II 243 ... A Study of the GITAS in the Mahabharata
sue. Those who are fetishistic should pursue Bhakti-Yoga. The BhG CHAPTER - XXXIV
has spoken of the different types of yogas namely karma-yoga,
Bhakti-yoga, abhyasa-yoga and the like. Many other yogas could
be derived from the Gitas which have not been named but included in THE GITAS & THE MAHABHARATA
either of the yogas. This is not the prescription for every one. In some True that each one of the gitas has its own perspective of the real-
people there are two opposite instincts in the instinct to obey and the ity. Hence one is in no way a repetition of another. They differ from
instinct to order. These people should be under the restriction of posi- one another on various points. But once we read them in the context
tive law. Them the Gita exhorts to control their senses consciously. of the Mahabharata, they seem to be voices set against the society of
Because habit is often the second nature. When we control our nature the Mahabharata.
we no doubt have an alternative nature. To prove our point let us have a hurried look here and there into
the society of the Mahabharata.
Here fraud, dominates over truth. Kadru proves through fraud that
the horses of the Sun are black and not white. Consequently Vinata
becomes Kadru’s bondswoman for ages and aeons till her child Garuda
is hatched from the egg. Then all the ingredients of the revenge drama
take place. Garuda liberates her mother from the throes of the bonded
labour. And snakes who are his cousins and the children of Kadru
become his food.
King Parikshit blinded with rage and audacity puts a dead snake
around the neck of a saint who was plunged in meditation and who
paid no heed to the prayers of the thirsty king. No wonder that the
son of the hermit cursed the king. Consequently the King died of
snake-bite. The snake Takshaka which bit the King was nothing more
than a means in the hands of the fate that was king Parikshit’s own
doing. Janamejaya however seeking vengeance lights up the sacrifi-
cial fire where all the snakes of the world are drawn to be burnt. Thus,
the yajna in the Mahabharata has not been employed to the end of
salvation of the soul. Sacrifices are activities to personal end. Brah-
mins aid and abet such horrid deeds. The main action of the epic
revolves round the conflict between the five brothers or Pandavas on
one side and the hundred brothers or Kauravas on another side. The
bone of contention is regarding inheritance of paternal property. All of
The Gitas & The Mahabharata 245 246 ... A Study of the GITAS in the Mahabharata
the contenders are no ordinary men. While the hundred brothers are episode points out a Kanya is Vastra or a bag to carry a child and
incarnation of demons, the five brothers are the children of gods. Thus that is all. The daughter is a commodity with her royal father. There
it seems that the gods and demons have chosen the earth for their trial comes a saint at King Yajati’s Court. He asks for certain rare horses
of strength. It puts in our mind the fact that the western powers always six hundred in count. The king humbly says that he can not give the
choose Asia for their trial of strength so that Europe and America saint all the horses. Instead he gives his daughter away to the saint.
remain free from the ravages of war. The five brothers have been The saint gets two hundred horses from another king in exchange of
highly eulogised. They flee from Hastinapur and remain incognito for the king Yajati’s daughter with whom the king will cohabit for a pas-
years. In the meantime they move from strength to strength. They join sage of time. The kings daughter goes with the saint thereafter only to
in dynastic marital alliances. They acquire great spiritual prowess. They cohabit with another king for a passage to time. In exchange the sec-
become really gods upon earth. And still they can not give up their ond king also gives away two hundred horses to the saint. Finally the
trifling claim on five villages, that they must wrest from the hands of saint reaches his preceptor. The saint gives away all the six hundred
their Kaurava brothers. Is it spiritualism? Call it spiritualism? Celibacy horses but he is supposed to give two hundred more horses as dakshina.
and restraint of senses is a high value with these sage-like five broth- But the guru gladly gives up his claim on two hundred horses more
ers. And yet Arjuna sets out with the vow of celibacy for one year. and is content with cohabiting with Yajati’s daughter for a passage of
When he comes back home--that is, to his brothers and mother, he time instead. Thus love and lust, jealousy and quest for power are the
has already married three women within the span of one year. Celi- torches of life in the society of the Mahabharata. They culminate in the
bacy and chastity, however, spoken high of, are matter of choice in mass massacre called Kurukshetra. The landscape of the society of
the society of the Mahabharata. True that Bhishma never marries. He the Mahabharata turns into a vast necropolis indeed. And all passions
keeps his word. But when his sister-in-law becomes widow, he says spent there is a calm of mind that marches heaven ward.
that a brahmin could be paid some gold, so that he could cohabit with Seen from psychological stand point the main action of the
her. In other words a chaste woman could cohabit with a brahmin Mahabharata could be interpreted on another level. The Pandavas
having paid him some money in return. The treatment meted out to the and Kauravas both of them the children of the author Veda Vyasa
women in the society in the Mahabharata is singularly unique. The risi himself. Although Veda Vyasa unlike Valmiki is more intent on show-
Parasara takes fancy on Satyabati. With his extra-sensory power, the ing the events and characters instead of narrating them Veda Vyasa
risi creates a fog around himself and Satyabati and cohabits with her. himself is a narrator with arbitary powers. He does not let the events
Thereafter he says that Satyabati will remain still a Kanya. In other move on their own whenever there is a crisis. Veda Vyasa shows up.
words Parasara does not take the charge of the woman, he cohabits For example when Satyabati is widowed, he turns up on the behest of
with. She is free to choose her husband once again. Draupadi is mar- his mother and cohabits with her & with her maid servant. Thus the
ried to five brothers. At the same time, to ask for her consent regard- Pandavas & the Kauravas are de facto his children. When they are at
ing such a marriage does not arise in the world of the Mahabharata. a loss to know how could a daughter be given away to five husbands
Each brother cohabits with her for a year. Then she becomes a Kanya at the same time, Vedavyasa appears at the Court of King Drupada
again to cohabit with another brother. In fact as the Dusyanta Sakuntala and cites precedence, so that Draupadi can have five husbands at a
The Gitas & The Mahabharata 247 248 ... A Study of the GITAS in the Mahabharata
time. are at heart made of the self same view of life and they have been
In fact any narrative whatever is the externalisation of its author’s sheer cry in the wilderness of the world of the Mahabharata. On the
mind. All the characters are but his conflicting inclinations. The battle surface, while the action of the Mahabharata moves with reekless
in his soul among conflicting inclinations are externalised in the battle speed towards a mass-massacre, the voices of the collective mind
of Kurukshetra. The result is the annihitation of both the so called given tongue through the gitas are lone cries, crying out to check the
good & bad and there is perfect nihil or emptiness—a state of mind course of events. And no wonder, a realist as Vedavyasa is, they fail.
that grasps the indescribable reality. And yet ironically enough the battle lost & won at Kurukshetra, seems
Thus the story of the Mahabharata is lorn with love & lust, quest to reach us the readers and the listeners. We learn the truth that all the
for power & vengeance. And in this background the gitas together heroics of man out to conquer the world are but human frailties
seem to be a voice from the deeper layers of consciousness where foredoomed to failure. The gitas which hold out nothingness as the be
truth reigns supreme. They are the inspired sayings. They repeatedly all and end all of existence and the reality lurking behind the show of
command as in the Rishabha gita, or in the Bodhya gita–Abandon ye things are the words that persist.
all hopes. Even Krishna in the Srimadbhagavad Gita asks to act, act
in the living present. But one must not hope for any fruition whatever,
as a consequence of one’s activities. The Brahmana gita, however,
rises above all physical actions. It observes that the yajna need not
be enacted out there in the physical world. One must be aware of it
being performed continuously within one’s body and being. The
Bhagavadgita exhorts that one should be sans company sangavarjita.
This means that one should not be involved with one’s senses. In
other words, one neither desires for anything nor abhors anything. In-
deed such a man is alone. And he like the speaker of Bodhyagita
abandons the worldly life to wander as lonely as the single bangle
round the wrist of a virgin. Krishna exhorts Arjuna to be alone & yet
to take part in the war. This is apparently a paradox. Clearly Krishna’s
advice admits of the dichotony of existence. If we are committed to
something in the worldly life, we have to play our due part to fulfil the
commitment. But at heart each one of us must be alone. In other
words we must pay Caesar his dues. But this is applicable in the case
of a tax-payer of Ksatrya prince. Wanderers like Bodhya donot have
such commitments. Hence they need not join in any war. Thus al-
though on the surface one gita differs from another in details, the gitas

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A Study of the GITAS in the Mahabharata

Message from God made :

Message from God made :

Cover : Chayan Chatterjee

Rameshchandra Mukhopadhyaya Published by :

Anjali Publishers ISBN :

14 Ramanath Majumder Street

Gita in Sanskrit literature is a literary genre in its

Mahabharata has had no interpolation. Because the extant version of

differences in the world of appearance. become victorious in war.

Sthitaprayjnasya ka bhasa samadhisthasya kesava (II-54)

possessions will be destryed. How is that? What ineffable wealth does

would give enough roots and fruits for man’s survival.

(Cp. bhunjati te tvagham papah ye pachantyatmakaranat

punishes him. just as a hunter shoots a fidgeting deer.

cannot take place, whenever it is asked for.

vihaya sarva sankalpan budhya sarira manasan atahparam pravaksyami yogasastramanuttamam

CHAPTER - XI told a few enquiring sages of yore.

concerned with the freedom of the soul.

And then attains old age & senility.

them. Hence, offer me everything that is yours

The above fattvas could be further understood in terms of the two

The concept of adhibhuta, adhidaiva and adhyatmika is a univer-

Here body should mean every physical body in the universe.

CHAPTER - XX CHAPTER - XXI

(Also compare Anu gita Ch.II 49. Here it is attributed to Brah-

darkness too in tajjyotistamasah paramucyate And of course this

CHAPTER - XXIV CHAPTER - XXV

TIME THE WORLD

discourses taking place among super-human beings. The Hansa gita

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