Bhagavad Gita wasn’t always India

defining book. Another text was far

popular globally
It was only after Western interpretations made it popular that nationalists like G
Aurobindo and Tilak took up the Gita and made it India’s seminal philosophical
PRATHAMA BANERJEE 15 December, 2019 11:01 am IST

W
Bhagavad Gita | Photo by Caesar Oleksy from Pexels

hich is the Indian text most widely known in the world? Most will say, wi
the Bhagavad Gita. But few know that the Gita’s global fame is a very rece
phenomenon, consequent to the Western ‘discovery’ of what Europeans t
Hinduism’s national text.

Way before the Bhagavad Gita became global, there was another text that was far mo
translated and read across the Indian subcontinent and the world. It was the
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The Bhagavad Gita and the Panchatantra embody very different political sensibilities
continue to inform contemporary politics in India.

Also read: Rahul, not Modi, has proved to be a true student of the Bhagavad Gita

Gita less popular

In pre-colonial times, the Bhagavad Gita was an esoteric text, meant for academic ph
theologians. There are many sophisticated commentaries on the Bhagavad
as Shankara, Ramanuja, Abhinavagupta, Nilkantha, Sridhara, Anandavardhana, etc. T
unlike the stories of the Mahabharata, was thus never quite part of popular discourse

It became a popular concern only after its first foreign language translation, the 1785
Charles Wilkins under the patronage of Governor-General Warren Hastings. August S
it into German in 1823 and his brother, the famous German romantic poet Friedrich S
commented on it. The German idealist philosopher and early inspiration for Karl Ma
too commented on the Bhagavad Gita, followed by many other German and American
intellectuals such as Arthur Schopenhauer and Aldous Huxley.

It was only after these Western interpretations and their global popularity that India
like M. K. Gandhi, Aurobindo Ghosh and Lokmanya Tilak took up the Bhagavad
India’s national text. Editions of the Bhagavad Gita were then relentlessly printed by
like. It became common reading in literate households. It is indeed quite telling that
admission, Gandhi’s introduction to the Bhagavad Gita was through Edwin Arnold’s
translation, The Song Celestial. Gandhi writes in his autobiography that he first read
the Bhagavad Gita in English when in London, in the company of theosophists.

Also read: Ambedkar and Gita: There is a reason why Narendra Modi will never men
together
Three biases
The Gita’s western trajectory was primarily responsible for three biases that continue
in India today.

The first bias is that the Bhagavad Gita was and is the most representative text of Ind
philosophy. This is by no means true because in earlier times there were many conten
philosophical schools in India and the interpretations of Bhagavad Gita

The second is that Indian philosophy, as represented by the Bhagavad

heart. This, again, is untrue because there were many philosophies in India, not just B
also of some schools of Vedanta, which were known as nastika.
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And the third is that the most important shloka of the Gita is the one about us having
but not to its fruits. As noted writer and theorist Sibaji Bandyopadhyay has shown, th
particular shloka was never the centrepiece of the Bhagavad Gita, and was made so p
modern European commentators like Hegel, which in turn informed the Indian natio
imagination of political action as sacrifice.

Also read: Trying to define Bhagavad Gita through narrow silos is a sterile attempt, a

The influential Panchatantra

Contrast the Bhagavad Gita’s career to that of the Panchatantra. The latter had travel
the world much before the Gita. Panchatantra’s first ‘foreign’ translation was into the
in the 6th century CE. This was in turn translated into Old Syriac in 570, and into Arab
ibn al- Muqaffa’ in 750 as Kalilah and Dimnah, after the two jackal ministers Karatak
of the lion king Pingalaka.

The Arabic version was further translated to Greek in the 11th century, and further int
and Slavonic. There was a 1251 Persian translation and a 12th century Hebrew one. In
version by John of Capua was the first Panchatantra to be printed, and which was ret
English by Sir Thomas North in 1570. The repeated translations and retranslations of
made this text highly influential across the world as a treatise of political wisdom.
It was only in modern times that the Panchatantra came to be overshadowed by Indi
eternal spiritual text, the Bhagavad Gita, and reduced to animal stories for children.

The Bhagavad Gita is about dharma. It speaks not only of universal moral duties like
sacrifice, but also swadharma, often understood as an individual’s caste duties. The ca
the Gita, pointed out amongst others by B. R. Ambedkar, made modern Indian nation
uneasy.

The Panchatantra, on the other hand, was about artha and niti in the tradition of
The stories were about political efficacy – as narrated by the wise Brahmin Visnu Sar
foolish sons of the king, though there are Brahman figures in the stories who are also
foolish, ridiculous and hasty. In the Panchatantra, the real protagonists are the two ja
the lion king and the basic message is that wise counsel is critical to politics.

As Indologist Patrick Olivelle says, the stories of the Panchatantra were so famous be
captured beautifully the ethical complexity of political situations, when it becomes d
moral judgements based on purely normative parameters. The Panchatantra
very notion of duty or dharma is in jeopardy.

The Bhagavad Gita and the Panchatantra represent two faces of our current political
that says that politics is about moral duty and sacrifice, the other that says that politi
intelligence and wisdom in morally uncertain times.

After all, what was the Kurukshetra, the scene of the Gita, but a morally uncertain mo
required that brothers and teachers be killed? The Bhagavad Gita asks us to do so in t
We can only guess what the Panchatantra would say. It would probably ask, as did Yu
end of the Mahabharata: what is the point of just kingship if there is no one left to ru

The author is a historian and professor at Centre for Study of Developing Societies. Vi

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