YAROSLAV VASSILKOV

The Gītā versus the Anugītā:

Were Sāükhya and Yoga ever Really ‘One’?

The history of scholarship on the Anugītā can be reviewed very briefly because the
text has not received adequate attention so far. The first name in the short list of
scholars who have worked on the Anugītā is Kashinath Trimbak Telang, the author
of a good English translation based on unique manuscript commentaries. Telang
analysed the text painstakingly and was the first to notice that the Anugītā, which
‘professes to be a sort of continuation, or rather recapitulation’ of the Bhagavadgītā,
in fact differs from the latter at least with reference to the social conditions and the
social norms described in both. This gave him grounds to conclude that the two texts
‘belong to different stages of ancient Indian history’ and that the Anugītā ‘stands
[chronologically] at a very considerable distance from the Bhagavadgītā’ (Telang
1882: 218-219, 227). Telang made good use of the text’s subtle details in order to
suggest a hypothetical dating of the Anugītā (not later than the 3rd century AD).
However, Telang believed that the BhG and the AG represent the same trend of
thought. He failed, it seems, to notice that the AG stands in sharp contrast to the
BhG as far as their basic ideas are concerned.
According to Arvind Sharma, ‘no one after Telang seems to have taken serious
interest in it [= the AG], especially in its relation to the Bhagavadgītā’. However,
nowadays the general opinion, as recently formulated by John Brockington (HdO, p.
270), is that ‘the Anugītā [in relation to the BhG] ... in fact propounds an appreciably
different doctrine’. There is general agreement too that the AG, as far as its specula-
tive orientation is concerned, is predominantly an early (or proto-)Sāükhyayic text
(see, e,g.: Johnston 1937: 4, 6; Larson 1979: 108-109; Larson & Bhattacharya 1987:
116; Brockington 1999: 488). As a Sāükhyayic text it was sometimes contrasted
with the Gītā as a ‘Vedantic’ or a ‘proto-Viśiùñādvaita’ text, for example. They were
also treated as texts representing the same trend of thought, but differing from each
other in the measure of outside influences. Thus, Mircea Eliade (1969: 394) wrote:
‘The Anugītā ... forms a sort of appendix to the Bhagavad Gītā; the amalgamation of
Sāükhya-Yoga and Vedānta is carried even further.’ – cf. R. C. Zaehner’s remark:
‘The Anugītā is considerably later then the Bhagavadgītā and Buddhist influence has
made an even greater inroad’ (Zaehner 1969: 363).
2 YAROSLAV VASSILKOV

Much more important than Zaehner’s introducing the question of the Buddhist
influence on the BhG1 is his observation made elsewhere in the same work that
the so-called Anugītā or “Gītā Recapitulated”, ... in fact, is no recapitulation at all
for it omits all that teaching in the Gītā which, because it was new, was described
by Krishna as being‘most mysterious’ – the revelation of the love of God (Zaehner
1969: 7).

Two Opposing Views

In more recent literature on the AG two basic points of view can be discerned
regarding a relationship between it and the BhG. It may seem, at first sight, that the
views exclude each other.
1. In 1978 Arvind Sharma published an article which later formed a chapter on
the AG in his book The Hindu Gītā (1986: 1-12). In this pioneering study Sharma
stresses the significance of the AG for the history of the perception and interpretation
of the BhG by later generations of Indians. There are passages in the AG which
assert that the text faithfully conveys the essence of the BhG’s teaching, although in
a somewhat different way. As Zaehner did before him, Sharma considers the specific
message of BhG to be of theistic and bhaktic nature. The AG, on the other hand,
almost totally ignores the message and represents the first link in the sequence of
‘jñāna-oriented’ re-interpretations which reached its culmination in the Gītābhāùya
of Śaïkara. In brief, the way from the BhG to the AG is the way from theism and
bhakti to jñāna – the Indian gnosis: the way of liberation by knowledge.
2. Another modern scholar who has recently paid some attention to the AG is
Madhav Deshpande. In his article ‘The epic context of the Bhagavadgītā’ (1991) he
starts off with a popular misconception that
there was a version of the Mahābhārata which did not contain a notion of Kçùõa as a
divinity. A version of the Bhagavadgītā most probably had existed before Kçùõa’s
divinity developed and was added to the epic. Perhaps the first three chapters of the
current Bhagavadgītā contain material that goes back to this older core. A reflection
of this stage of the Bhagavadgītā is seen in the Anugītā which purports to summarize
the Bhagavadgītā, and yet does not contain references to Kçùõa as a divinity.’ (Desh-
pande 1991: 347.)2
———————
1
It seems to me that the possibility of such an influence is still very hypothetical. At
the very least, practically all ‘similarities of expression and ideas’ between the BhG and
Buddhist texts demonstrated by K. N. Upadhyaya in his monograph (1971) can be
explained away by the reference to the usage in both cases of common vocabulary and
themes inherited from the earlier tradition of religious poetry. The use by the Gītā of
some terms of possibly Buddhist origin (but in modified meaning) may be due to the
initial syncretism of Indian religious philosophy – the phenomenon which will be
discussed below.
2
I call this a popular ‘misconception’ because, as I tried to prove elsewhere, Indian epic
singers always played on the alternation between knowledge and apparent ignorance of
 The Gītā versus the Anugītā 3

Thus, according to Deshpande, the AG, as a recapitulation of the BhG reflects an

initial, pre-theistic stage of the Gītā. The direction of the historical development of
Indian religious thought is from the non-theistic, gnostic Sāükhya to theism: pre-
cisely the inverse of the direction suggested by Arvind Sharma.
It seems to me that both concepts tend to oversimplify the complexity of the rela-
tionship between the AG and the BhG. The aim of my paper is to outline these com-
plex relationships in their historical development. The study is based on a com-
parative analysis of the two texts.

The Basic Opposition: Yoga and Sāükhya

The first chapter of the AG begins with Arjuna’s request to Kçùõa to repeat the
sermon of the BhG, because the horrors of the war had wiped away its memory from
Arjuna’s mind. Kçùõa criticizes Arjuna for being forgetful and inattentive and says
that he cannot reproduce his sermon in the same way as he told it previously because
then, on Kurukùetra, he was yogayukta. Now he is not yogayukta, and can only tell
Arjuna an itihāsa purātana.3 Both terms are often misunderstood. K. T. Telang ren-
dered Kçùõa’s words ‘I was then yogayukta’ as ‘I was accompanied by my mystic
power’. Arvind Sharma translates yogayukta as simply ‘inspired’. However, the
word is most probably used here in the same sense as in the BhG itself: ‘I was then
practising yoga’, ‘I was in the yogic introspective trance / meditation’.
The term itihāsa purātana in the didactic books of the Mahābhārata usually
refers to religious sermons and speculative discourses. Many chapters in the AG and
Mokùadharma define themselves as itihāsa purātana. As Edward N. Tyomkin has
aptly demonstrated, in such contexts the word itihāsa is equal in its meaning to
pāraüparyopadeśa, ‘traditional knowledge accumulated through ages, transferred
from generation to generation, from a teacher to his pupil’ (Tyomkin 1996: 14).
Clearly, the authors or the ‘editors’ of the AG were aware of the difference
between the BhG and the AG, and they explained it by a reference to the different
origins of the texts. They treated the BhG as a text based on direct yogic experience,
whereas the text of the AG was considered to be based on tradition: on indirect,
mediated knowledge which had been transmitted by generations of learned men. Nor

the action’s mythological background. Keeping silence for a time being regarding the
divine nature of the epic heroes and then suddenly revealing it at the key points of the
narrative has always been the basic artistic principle of Indian heroic poetry (Vassilkov
2001a: 26-27). Kçùõa was always regarded to be an incarnation of Viùõu: first of Indra’s
assistant in the act of Vçtra’s slaying, Viùõu-Trivikrama, and later of the All-God,
Viùõu-Nārāyaõa. The absence of references to his divinity in the first chapters of the
BhG can not be used as a proof of the Gītā’s initial non-theistic nature.
3
paraü hi brahma kathitaü yogayuktena tan mayā |
itihāsaü tu vakùyāmi tasminn arthe purātanam || (MBh 14,16.12).
4 YAROSLAV VASSILKOV

can modern scholars deny that the BhG, or at least its core, belonged to a certain
trend of thought and practice which stressed the role of yoga on the way to eman-
cipation. The AG, on the other hand, represented a tradition which stressed the role
of knowledge, and we know that it was nothing but an early form of Sāükhya. The
BhG may therefore be called a yogic text, while the AG should be defined as a
Sāükhyayic text. I do not mean to say yogic in the sense of Patañjali’s Yoga and
Sāükhyayic as the classical Sāükhya of Īśvarakçùõa and others; rather, I mean these
words in their original senses, which can be seen in the ancient compound ‘Sāü-
khyayoga’ – ‘Yoga with Sāükhya’, i.e. a particular kind of yoga which was accom-
panied by an ‘intuitive-philosophical’ examination of the yogic states of conscious-
ness, by defining, memorizing and ‘enumerating’ [sāükhya] stages of cosmic mani-
festation and basic principles in the psychocosmos.

The Common Source

It seems significant that the earliest references to Sāükhya in Sanskrit texts use the
term in combination with the term yoga. The three ‘philosophies’ known to the
Arthaśāstra (the core text dated by c. 300 BC) are the materialistic Lokāyata, Sāü-
khya and Yoga.4 The Śvetāśvatara-Upaniùad (c. 400-200 BC) mentions God as ‘the
cause’ (of the world?) to be cognized by the methods of Sāükhya and Yoga (or
Sāükhyayoga).5 The ‘Proto-Sāmkhya’ texts of the Mahābhārata stress the unity of
Sāükhya and Yoga as two paths leading to the same goal; e.g. the Mokùadharma
says:
What the yogins see, to that then go (mentally) Sāükhyayics; Sāükhya or Yoga are
one; one who sees it possesses the (correct) buddhi (MBh 12,293.30).6

cf. a variation of the verse in the BhG:

What place Sāükhyayics (mentally) reach – there yogins go too; Sāükhya and Yoga
are one; one who sees it, he sees (correctly) (MBh 6,27[BhG 5].5).7

In Bhāskaras’s version there is an interesting variant reading of the first line:

What Sāükhyayics (mentally) see, there yogins then go8 ...

———————
4
sāükhyaü yogo lokāyataü cety ānvīkùikī (Arthaśāstra 1.2.10)
5
tatkāraõaü sāükhyayogādhigamyaü jñātvā devaü mucyate sarvapāśaiþ (ŚvetU 6.13).
6
yad eva yogāþ paśyanti sāükhyais tad anugamyate |
ekaü sāükhyaü ca yogaü ca yaþ paśyati sa buddhimān || 30 ||
7
yat sāükhyaiþ prāpyate sthānaü tad yogair api gamyate |
ekaü sāükhyaü ca yogaü ca yaþ paśyati sa paśyati || 5 ||
8
yad eva sāükhyaiþ paśyanti yogais tad anugamyate |
 The Gītā versus the Anugītā 5

Similar Mokùadharma verses proclaiming the unity of Sāükhya and Yoga (including
one more variation of this particular verse 12,304.4) have been recently reviewed
and discussed by Peter Schreiner in his article ‘What comes first (in the Mahā-
bhārata): Sāükhya or Yoga?’ (1999). In his conclusions the author joins the majority
of Gītā scholars who explained hypothetically the affirmations of the unity of Sāü-
khya and Yoga by a presumed necessity to synthesize two different religious trends.
Schreiner suggests that the ‘editors’ of the Mahābhārata ‘wanted to convey authori-
ty and orthodoxy’ to Sāükhya – ‘the newcomer in the epic compendium’ – by way
of ‘putting it on a par with Yoga as the better known and more generally accepted
paradigm of a mokùadharma’ (Schreiner 1999: 775). This implies the thesis that
Sāükhya and Yoga are originally separate trends, to which Schreiner, in his analysis
of such statements as ‘Sāükhya and Yoga are one’, is led by the following argu-
ment: ‘It makes sense to identify entities only if they are distinct, and distinct before
they become one’ (Schreiner 1999: 768).
But affirmations of the unity of Sāükhya and Yoga leave room for an alternative
explanation: could they not have represented an attempt to preserve the original uni-
ty of the two entities, which was for some reason in danger? As Gerald Larson says,
Rather than interpreting such passages as attempts to synthesize an older Sāükhya and
Yoga, the passages probably reflect precisely the opposite. They represent attempts to
deny a process of differentiation which is beginning to occur in later times. (Larson
1979: 122.)

There is some indication regarding the original syncretism of Sāükhya and Yoga in
the BhG itself, where Kçùõa clearly states that long ago (purā) he proclaimed his
basic doctrine in two forms: as jñānayoga (= Sāükhya) for sāükhyas (= Sāükhya-
yics, or ‘enumerators’) and as karmayoga for yogins (MBh 6,25[BhG 3].3).9 . This
means that at the time of the BhG, Indians believed that Sāükhya and Yoga had
initially represented two aspects (speculative and practical) of a single religious phe-
nomenon, each being a complement to the other. In the earliest known teaching
connected with the name of Kçùõa, son of Devakī – the sermon of Ghora Āïgirasa,
Kçùõa’s teacher in ChāU 3.17 – the germs of some Yoga and Sāükhya concepts
seem to be present simultaneously. The evidence, if we interpret it correctly (for a
detailed analysis of the text see below), provides grounds to believe that a certain
kind of proto-Sāükhyayoga already existed as early as 800-600 BC.10
———————
9
loke ’smin dvividhā niùñhā purā proktā mayānagha |
jñānayogena sāükhyānāü karmayogena yoginām || 3 ||
10
Something like ‘Sāükhya[yic ]Yoga’ is mentioned in the 14th adhyāya (2nd pariśiùña)
of the Nirukta (14.6: sāükhyaü yogaü samabhyasyet). Unfortunately, the dating of the
2nd pariśiùña remains problematic. The widespread opinion is that its composition very
probably post-dates the commentary by Durga on the preceding 13 books. The date of
Durga himself is much debated and varies from ‘1st – not later than 13th century AD’ to
‘before 600’ and ‘6th century’. For this information I am most grateful to Peter M.
6 YAROSLAV VASSILKOV

Who Does the Gītā Argue with?

The integrity of the Sāükhyayoga with its two aspects (the yogic practical con-
templation of the innermost Self and the Sāükhyayics’ ‘theorizing’ about it) must
have lasted for centuries, but then the situation changed. Repeated claims, in the
BhG and some Mokùadharma texts, that ‘Sāükhya and Yoga are one’ and that to
think so is the only true way to think may imply that there were people who held
different views – opponents who represented a threat to the integrity of the Sāü-
khyayoga as a tradition of practice and doctrine.
Those who call Sāükhya and Yoga separate (traditions) are (foolish) children, not the
learned men... (MBh 6,27[BhG 5].4).11

The BhG is undoubtedly a polemical text. Its critique is sometimes aimed at tradi-
tional distant opponents: Vedic ritualists, or materialists. But most persistent and
fierce attacks are launched, as often happens, on yesterday’s closest allies, now
turned into schismatics. From the verse quoted above (BhG 5.4) we learn that these
dissenters tried to separate Sāükhya from Yoga. As Gerald Larson suggests,
there was probably a ‘school’ or tradition of Sāükhyayoga which was claiming an
independent position apart from the other undifferentiated traditions. This ‘school’
emphasized only a kind of metaphysical knowledge as sufficient for salvation. Interest
in this ‘school’ centred in the enumeration of tattvas and in the realization of the dis-
tinction between the field and the field-knower. Less emphasis was placed ... on
practice and meditation. (Larson 1979: 122.)

We shall try to define other specific features of this ‘school's’ viewpoint by way of
comparative analysis of the BhG and the AG. As a result we shall see that the
concepts which BhG most ardently criticizes are the basic ideas of the independent
gnostic Sāükhya as it is represented in the AG. Sometimes it may seem, para-
doxically, that the BhG’s opponents had become authors of the AG. In other words,
the Gītā seems to argue with the text which is believed to be a few centuries younger
than the BhG itself.
In the rest of this paper an attempt will be made to explain, at least hypothet-
ically, how these paradoxical relations between the BhG an the AG might have
emerged. But first it would be worthwhile to dwell on the relative chronology of the
two texts.

Scharf (see his posting to the INDOLOGY e-mail list, 9 June 2003). However, there is
the possibility of another dating, more relevant to the discussion of the Sāükhyayoga’s
early history. Ashok Aklujkar (in a personal communication) kindly acquainted me with
some weighty arguments in favor of a much earlier dating for the 14th adhyāya, perhaps
even in the same period as the rest of the Nirukta.
11
sāükhyayogau pçthag bālāþ pravadanti na paõóitāþ |
 The Gītā versus the Anugītā 7

Relative and Absolute Chronology

In truth, we can speak about a relative chronology of the BhG and the AG only in
most general terms. Both texts are multi-layered,12 each one grew in volume towards
its end, in the direction in which many Indian texts grew. According to the most
detailed reconstruction of the BhG’s gradual growth by Mislav Ježić (1979; 1986)
the level of the oldest origin, added to the ‘epic layer’, was the so-called ‘first yoga
layer’ (BhG 2.39 – 4.42) ‘which presupposes the knowledge of some elementary
Sāükhya conceptions’ (Ježić 1979: 546-547, 554-555) or ‘the first Sāükhya layer’
(BhG 2.11-30, 38; Ježić 1986: 636). But considerable, at least equal antiquity should
be ascribed also to the theistic hymn in the tçiùñubh meter (the bulk of the BhG 11,
possibly also BhG 2.5-8; 9.20-21; 15.15), which ‘perhaps ... was the Ur-Bhagavad-
gītā’ (Ježić 1986: 634).13 I shall try in this paper to substantiate my conviction that
———————
12
The BhG since the times of Wilhelm von Humboldt (1826) has been considered by the
majority of scholars to be a composite text, though the opposite tendency to view it as a
basic unity has also been present throughout the same period (see especially Lamotte
1929; Zaehner 1969) and now is represented by such authors as e.g. Robert N. Minor
(Minor 1991: xliii). Both positions can be reconciled by the suggestion that a late editor
(or editors) did his best to synthesize different layers and bring the text to ‘the greatest
possible unity’ (Ježić 1986: 629-630).
13
Mislav Ježić considers this hymn, however, to be an independent religious poem, in-
cluded in the Mahābhārata’s 6th book at a later period and ‘synthesized,’ by a Vāsu-
devabhakta, with several Sāükhyayic and Yogic ‘Upaniùads’ already present there. One
of the main arguments in favour of a later date for this process is that the theistic hymn
contains some measure of parallelism with the svadharma passage (BhG 2.31-38). In
that passage Kçùõa answers Arjuna’s decision not to fight with the heroic response,
‘Having fallen in battle, you will reach svarga; having won, you will enjoy the Earth.
Therefore: rise up! ... Fight!’ (BhG 2.37). In the theistic hymn, there are some obvious
lexical correspondences, but Kçùõa’s answer is different (‘I have already killed your
enemies, you should be only an instrument of my work!’; Ježić 1986: 630-631). This
fact could point to the hymn’s standing to the svadharma passage (which Ježić regards,
as it seems, to be a part of the initial ‘epic layer’) in the relation of a ‘duplication repe-
tition’ (when the verses ‘repeat something said elsewhere but giving it quite a different
connotation’; Ježić 1986: 629). Thus the hymn would presuppose the epic layer
(together with several Sāükhya and Yoga layers; Ježić 1986: 633) and the date of its
insertion into Book 4 would have to be late. But this conclusion is called into question
by the fact that the svadharma passage, in spite of the use of some traditional heroic
ideas and terms (svarga, kīrti etc.), contains at the same time some late elements of
vocabulary, grammar and style (e.g. two instances of periodic, or necessary, enjamb-
ment between pādas in BhG 2.33). Moreover, the words in BhG 2.39 ‘This (correct)
mental attitude has been revealed to you in (terms of) Sāükhya ...’ refer obviously not
to the svadharma passage, but to the preceeding ‘Sāükhya layer’ (BhG 2.11-30). In
other words, the svadharma passage, where Kçùõa speaks the language of a soldier, is
probably a skilfully stylized imitation of heroic poetry, a later interpolation that presup-
poses the theistic hymn. The reason for its insertion in the Gītā may well be that it was a
matter of great importance for the Advaitins to prove that Kçùõa in the Gītā had used the
upāyakauśalya technique (‘the teacher begins where the pupil is, wins him, and then
guides him to higher truth which might even negate his earlier arguments’; Minor 1991:
8 YAROSLAV VASSILKOV

Yoga, Sāükhya and theism constitute the three basic, inseparable components of the
Gītā’s original teaching. In the opinion of many scholars (see, e.g. Humboldt 1826:
51-54; Charpentier 1930; Renou & Filliozat 1947: 395-396; Smith 1968; Malinar
1996: 414, etc.) the last 6 or 7 chapters of the BhG represent the latest layer of
its contents.14 The BhG as a whole is based on the worldview of the Sāükhya
(Sāükhyayoga), but different parts of the text display links with different stages in
the development of the tradition. In the words of E. H. Johnston, in the first 12
chapters of the BhG ‘the usage of Sāükhya expressions is closely parallel to the
earlier passages of the Mokùadharma, but from canto XIII on it corresponds to the
later strata of that book’ (Johnston 1937: 6-7). Anticipating, in part, the conclusions
of this paper, I would prefer to describe the situation in slightly different terms: the
BhG’s core presupposes the knowledge of the old Sāükhyayoga set of ideas, while
in the last chapters the concepts of the independent, gnostic Sāükhya, dominate.
Scholars tend to date the core of the poem to the 3rd/2nd centuries BC, whereas the
last additions (or the last ‘layer’) are attributed to the 2nd – 3rd centuries AD.
The AG too is a text with a long history. It consists of three parts: 1. A discourse
of a siddha and Kāśyapa (chapters 16-19) – probably, the original AG,15 to which
later parts were added: 2. a discourse of a Brahmin with his wife (chapters 20-34),
and 3. a discourse of a Brahmin with a disciple – in fact, a sermon preached by
Brahmā, the god (chapters 35-50). Scholastic classifications of various phenomena
of this world with reference to three guõas in the last part of the AG (chapters 36-39)
are very similar to the speculations on the same topic in the last chapters of the BhG
(especially chapters 14, 17, 18). Here we also find a typically Sāükhyayic, world-
negating image of the ‘inverted aśvattha’ 14,47.12-14, well-known from BhG 15.1-
3, but in the AG the image is accompanied by a related image of the kālacakra, the
wheel of time, which the adept is advised to destroy in a similar way (14,45.1-12).
This is directly opposed to the doctrine of the disinterested activity in the world, the
idea basic to the BhG’s core. Generally speaking, the last chapters of the AG have
much in common with the Sāükhyayic texts in the last chapters of the BhG and
could be assigned to more or less the same date –a fairly late one, in agreement with
John Brockington’s remark (1999: 488) that these parts of the AG (especially 14,40-
42 and 49) demonstrate ‘the nearest approach to the classical system’ of Sāükhya.
On the other hand, as E. H. Johnston remarked, ‘the Anugītā, ... though late in the
main, preserves earlier thought in a few cases’ (Johnston 1937: 6). Even in the third

56), of which the svadharma passage certainly gives a good example. The whole inter-
pretation of the BhG by Śaïkara is based on the assumption that Kçùõa used this
technique in his sermon to Arjuna.
14
The opposite point of view, implying that the central, theistic ùañka (adhyāyas 7-12) is
the youngest of the three, is represented in the works by G. S. Khair (1969), Mislav
Ježić (1986: 628-629) and Przemysłav Szczurek (this volume).
15
cf. Kçùõa’s concluding remarks in MBh 14,19.50 and 14,50.48.
 The Gītā versus the Anugītā 9

and final part of the AG there are Sāükhya lists of tattvas, betraying very old ori-
gins; e.g., in 14,35.36-39 there is a list of tattvas, containing, according to the text,
‘Vedic knowledge’16: here the author first names mahān ātman, then avyakta , then
ahaükāra and ten indriyas, 5 mahābhūtas, 5 ‘specifics’ or ‘specific properties’ of
the mahābhūtas (something like ‘subtle elements’ or tanmātras in classical philoso-
phy) – and all this constitutes the system of the 24 tattvas. Contrary to most descrip-
tions, mahān ātmā is listed first, before the avyakta. Puruùa is not mentioned at all:
perhaps he is implied and kept silently in mind, but it is equally possible that here we
have a non-dualistic version of Sāükhya. Similar versions are known from the
teachings of Pañcaśikha in the Mokùadharma, of Caraka in Carakasaühitā and of
Arāóa Kālāma according to Aśvaghoùa. All these sources may be dated approxi-
mately to the first centuries AD.
Elsewhere in the AG (14,46.52) there is an ascending sequence of tattvas which
an adept is to enumerate mentally in order to reach svarga (!): listed in an ascending
order they are: indriyas, their arthas (respective subtle elements), 5 gross elements,
manas, buddhi, ātman, avyakta and puruùa. Conspicuous here is the absence of the
ahaükāra which does not seem to have replaced the mahān ātman in the sequence
yet (see Johnston 1937: 83). This means that this particular list of tattvas must be of
an earlier origin than Aśvaghoùa, i.e., dated before 1st century AD. True, it would be
unwise to make serious chronological conclusions on the basis of such lists, in view
of the general fluidity of early Sāükhya concepts and of the poetic, popular form of
the teachings. The latter could explain the ambiguity of some concepts as being sim-
ply a result of purely poetic inconsistencies.
Yet there is no doubt that the core of the AG is younger than the core of the BhG
by several centuries. The main indicator to this fact is that the basic ideas of the Gītā
appear in the AG from the very beginning in a very weakened form, and gradually,
towards the end of the AG, almost totally fade away or are replaced by ideas of
exactly the opposite nature. Moreover, the Gītā never loses contact with its epic con-
text (at least, in its ‘core’ chapters); it keeps in memory the situation on the eve of
the battle, the names and epithets of the main heroes; it may sometimes reproduce
even a true warrior spirit, if needed – when Kçùõa, e.g., starts to preach referring to
the norms of kùatriyan svadharma. Nothing like that do we find in the AG: its
authors, most probably Brahmins, Sāükhya intellectuals and ascetics, stay as far
from the warriors in their outlook as possible. Moreover, they do not seem to be well
acquainted with the tradition of the Mahābhārata, although they claim to belong to
it. There is a model example of that, ‘a slip’, noticed already by K. T. Telang (1882:
205): in the first chapter of the AG the Brahmin-siddha refers twice to his pupil
Kāśyapa (of Brahmin origin) with the popular epic epithet paraütapa ‘scorcher of
———————
16
ity eùā vaidikī śrutiþ (MBh 14,35.38b).
10 YAROSLAV VASSILKOV

foes’ (14,16.26d, 40b), and once uses it as an address. There is only one possible ex-
planation to it: that the Brahminic author of the original AG misunderstood this
epithet in connection with the word tapas, something like ‘one who possesses tapas
in the highest measure’ (paraü as an adverb). It means that the AG stands in relation
to the BhG in a remote distance in time, and the milieu of the tradition has already
completely changed.
The AG must have been inserted into the text of Book 14 at a very late date. The
fact itself of an insertion cannot be doubted because MBh 14,62 resumes from
Vyāsa’s words at the end of 14,8 (Brockington: HdO, p. 154) or 14,10.25-35, thus
ignoring not only the AG (14,16-50), but also Vāsudeva’s sermon in 14,11-13, pre-
liminaries to the AG in 14,14-15, the Uttaïka episode in 14,52-57 and Kçùõa’s nar-
rating of the battle in 14,58-61. But the text of the Marutta story, into which the AG
along with some accompanying stories was interpolated, itself appears to be of a
fairly late origin. In 14,6, e.g., Vārāõasī is described as a pan-Indian tīrtha and an
ideal place for a cremation of the dead; to the best of my knowledge, it did not have
such significance until the Gupta age at the earliest. If the word caõóikā in a heavily
corrupted verse 14,9.28 refers to the goddess, then this fragment cannot be dated
earlier than the Gupta age either. The unnatural, artificial simile likening the god
Kubera to the young (morning) sun (14,8.7: bālādityasamādyutiþ) may contain a
poet’s flattering hint to the nickname of the Gupta emperor Narasiühagupta Bālā-
ditya, who fought against the Hun invaders at the beginning of the 6th century AD.
Thus, if we place the BhG into the period between 3rd/2nd century BC and 2nd/
3rd century AD, a hypothetical time range for the AG would be from the beginning
of the Christian Era to the 5th/6th centuries AD.

Theism in the Bhagavadgītā and the Anugītā

The first and most obvious line of change from the BhG to the AG is the decline of
theism. My views on the role and nature of theism in the BhG differ widely from the
tendency in BhG scholarship represented in particular by Madhav Deshpande in the
above-mentioned article (Deshpande 1991), or by such Gītā scholars as Mislav Ježić
(1979; 1986) and Przemysław Szczurek (this volume), who are inclined to consider
the text’s theism to be a later element superimposed on the substratum of the original
Gītā’s Sāükhyayic worldview. But it seems to me that the BhG’s theism is so
closely connected with the Sāükhyayoga concepts, that it cannot be separated from
them. One of the two specific ways to liberation preached by the Gītā – the karma-
yoga – is firmly based on Sāükhya concepts and the 3rd chapter of the text, specif-
ically dealing with it, abounds in Sāükhyayic terminology (see in particular MBh
6,25[BhG 3].4-7, 27-30). But at the same time, the karmayoga theory rests on the
theistic foundation: the highest teaching in the chapter on the karmayoga reveals the
 The Gītā versus the Anugītā 11

truth that the God himself acts in the world as the karmayogin (i.e., without any
interest in the fruit of action), setting the standard (pramāņa) for the human beings
to follow. Thus the highest ethical ideal of the BhG – the ideal of disinterested action
for the sake of lokasaügraha – proves to be theistically motivated (see the whole
passage MBh 6,25[BhG 3].20-25). The practice of the karmayoga is in fact a kind of
imitatio dei; and this can explain why in classical Yoga the God (īśvara) was
considered to be the archetypal yogin, the guru of the yogins, their guide and
Vorbild (YoS 26; Feuerstein 1979: 103; cf. Eliade 1969: 75). This is precisely what
is implied in the Gītā itself when Kçùõa calls himself ‘the guru of all the world’
(MBh 6,33[BhG 11].43).
The bhaktic theology of the BhG, treated in its central ùañka of chapters, is also
based on Sāükhyayoga ideas. For example, in MBh 6,29[BhG 7].4-5 Kçùõa de-
scribes his ‘lower nature’ as the ‘eightfold prakçti’, which is a very old Sāükhya-
yoga or proto-Sāükhya concept (see Larson 1979: 45, 54, 104, 106, 107, 118, 128-
131; Minor 1991: 239). There is also another, ‘higher prakçti’ which supports the
lower one and which ‘consists of jīvas’, i.e. is the collection of individual selves.
‘Everything ultimately derives from and dissolves in the higher and lower natures of
Kçùõa’ (Larson 1979: 128). In chapter 9, Kçùõa reveals to Arjuna the highest wis-
dom, the secret of ancient kings (rājavidyā): all beings at the end of a kalpa dissolve
in His prakçti, but at the beginning of a new aeon He, God, emits them again, and
does it not at His own will (avaśam) but at prakçti’s will. He remains udāsina
‘indifferent’ and that is why the actions do not bind Him. As the Surveyor (adhy-
akùa17) he watches how prakçti gives birth to all beings (MBh 6,31[BhG 9].7-10).
As is evident, many characteristics of puruùa known to us from later Sāükhya
and Yoga traditions appear in the BhG as characteristics of Kçùõa (īśvara). The
Gītā’s Sāükhyayoga is, therefore, markedly theistic. The BhG’s view of reality dif-
fers from both the monism of the Advaita and the non-theistic dualism of classical
Sāükhya and Yoga systems. While these systems recognize the pair of two ultimate
realities: the subjective (puruùa) and the objective (prakçti), the Gītā places above
both of them the highest ultimate reality, Kçùõa or īśvara, the God, who encom-
passes and transcends them.
Some scholars, mostly those who approach the BhG from the philological point
of view, believe that this theistic Sāükhyayoga appeared as a result of ‘synthesis’
done by an unknown genius in order to reconcile different doctrines and ways of
liberation which were in existence at his time with his own devotional theism. How-
ever, specialists in the history of Indian religious and philosophical thought prefer to
stress the fact that the proto-Sāükhyayoga and theism already formed a unity in
some of the Upaniùads which pre-date the BhG, such as Kañha or Īśa Upaniùads
———————
17
cf. adhyakùa in the Nāsadīyasūkta (èV 10,129.7), Puruùa’s epithets in classical Sāü-
khya (sākùin) and Yoga (draùñç, dçùi etc.).
12 YAROSLAV VASSILKOV

(Zaehner 1969: 36-37; Biardeau 1994: 27-28, 92).18 This ancient unity of the theism
and the proto-Sāükhyayoga in the ‘middle’ Vedic Upaniùads does not seem to be a
result of any ‘synthesis’ either. Some specialists in the history of Sāükhya and Yoga
philosophies suggested with good reason that proto-Sāükhya and proto-Yoga (or the
ancient Sāükhyayoga) had been theistic since the time they were born. According to
F. O. Schrader, the creators of ‘several systems called Sāükhya’ which emerged for
the first time in the Epic,
either changed the impersonal Brahman into a personal Lord, or kept the impersonal
as a material principle under a personal one. A Sāükhya of the latter kind with a
dethroned Brahman ... is found in the Bhagavadgītā (XIV.3 and 4) where the Lord
declares: ... ‘My womb is the Great Brahman; in it I place a germ from which comes
the origin of all beings ... The Great Brahman is the womb, I am the seed giving
father.’ (Schrader 1955: 1-2.)

K. B. Ramakrishna Rao, the author of the fundamental monograph Theism of Pre-

Classical Sāükhya, asserted that in the original Sāükhya the two Ultimates – puruùa
and prakçti could only belong
to a higher system, which ... brought to unity the two principles and against which
alone the principles can be intelligible. The background ... has been jerked under the
feet of the two principles in the classical text [= Sāükhyakārikā], which is unfor-
tunately one of the greatest suicidal attempts [in the history of philosophy]. (Rama-
krishna Rao 1966: 79.)

In other words, Sāükhya prior to the Sāükhyakārikā had been theistic until it
dropped out ‘the principle which alone could explain all facts of the Sāükhyan
philosophy, that has ended the Sāükhyas in logical difficulties hard to get over’
(Ramakrishna Rao 1966: 90; cf. Feuerstein 1980: 116; cf. Davies 1981: 112; Fowler
2002: 196). In the rest of his thick volume K. B. Ramakrishna Rao supports this
logical inference with a painstaking and quite convincing historico-philosophical
analysis of all relevant sources from the late hymns of the ègveda to the mediaeval
commentaries.19 Similar views on the nature and destiny of the Sāükhya were ex-
pressed more recently by Madeleine Biardeau who defines the difference between
classical Sāükhya and what can be called the original Sāükhya or Sāükhyayoga of
the Kañha-Upaniùad, the BhG and other early texts as follows: The classical system
enumerates in the same way ‘the successive planes of manifestation of the cosmos’20
———————
18
In this connection references are often given also to the Śvetāśvatara-Upaniùad, but
fairly powerful arguments have been produced in favour of a post-Gītā dating for this
text (see Ramakrishna Rao 1966: 304-316; Oberlies 1988: 57-60).
19
In particular, he refers to the Śrutaprakāśikā by Sudarśana Sūri (commentary on
Rāmānuja’s Śrībhāùya, probably of the 13th century), where the author stressed the dif-
ference between early theistic Sāükhya (propounded in the MBh and the Purāõas and
admitted by the Vedāntins) – and the later rationalistic, non-theistic Sāükhya which had
been refuted by Bādarāyana (Śrutaprakāśikā 2.2; Ramakrishna Rao 1966: 41-42).
 The Gītā versus the Anugītā 13

but ‘with one important modification: the structure is decapitated [The italics are
mine], losing the supreme puruùa [= īśvara] from which formerly everything issued
and in which everything had to be reabsorbed. The system becomes overtly dual-
istic’ (Biardeau 1994: 118). Gerald Larson is more cautious regarding the theistic
nature of the original Sāükhya: he prefers to postulate in the early period a simul-
taneous existence of different Sāükhya traditions which could define the highest
reality and the ultimate aim of the yoga practice in both theistic and non-theistic
terms (Larson 1979: 130; Larson & Bhattacharya 1987: 130).21
Some leading authorities on the system of classical Yoga vigorously oppose the
popular misconception that īśvara was introduced into the system from the outside;
on the contrary, they maintain that Yoga has always been seśvara (sa+īśvara) – i.e.,
theistic (Modi 1932: 81ff.; Feuerstein 1979: 45, 101; 1980: 1). Classical Yoga pre-
served unquestionably more remnants of theism than did classical Sāükhya, īśvara
remaining a principal feature of this system, and the reason for it is not only that God
is a psychological reality which, as we know from the history of the world religions,
can be experienced (Eliade 1969: 75-76; Feuerstein 1980: 5, 7; Feuerstein & Miller
1998: 21); the impersonal brahman can be experienced as well (which was stressed,
e.g., by Śaïkara [Zaehner 1969: 8]). More likely, the main reason is that the yogins
on their way, in the words of Peter Schreiner (1999: 776), ‘to death and through
dying, literally or spiritually’, needed īśvara as a kind of iùñadevatā to whom they
could appeal with a prayer or with His special mantra Oü in the moments of despair.
Sāükhyayics had no need in īśvara for reasons which we shall discuss later.
To summarize, it is most unlikely that the theistic Sāükhyayoga of the BhG was
synthesized by the author or authors of the text. The combination of Sāükhya, Yoga
and theism had already existed in the time of ‘middle’ Vedic Upaniùads and perhaps
even much earlier. The element which constituted the real novelty of the Gītā was
that the God appeared in it, for the first time in Sanskrit religious literature, as a
human being in flesh and blood, bearing a certain name – Kçùõa, having a person-
ality and a detailed legendary biography. It is noteworthy that the God in its highest,
transcendental form bears his human name in the Gītā, whereas the name Viùõu
appears only thrice (BhG 10.21, 11.24 & 30) as the name of the God in his mytho-
logical forms. This new concept of God had some very important consequences.
Firstly, it resulted in a new form of worship: as the God was so concretely personal,
the emotion of love centered on him became particularly strong and intense. Second-
ly, the experience of this devotional love (bhakti) gave new content to liberation

20
Corresponding in the reversed order to the ‘stages of yogic ascension’.
21
A similar view is taken, as it seems, by Robert N. Minor (1991: xxxvii). Among the
scholars who recognized the theistic nature of pre-classical Sāükhya or Sāükhyayoga
we must also mention Hermann Oldenberg (1919), S. N. Dasgupta (1922), Franklin
Edgerton (1924) and J. A. B. van Buitenen (1957).
14 YAROSLAV VASSILKOV

itself. In contrast with previous concepts implying that the personality of the adept
after the final emancipation dissolved in the impersonal brahman, or in the divine
essence of God, in the Gītā the achievement of liberation does not mean that both the
bhakta’s self and God as a person disappear; rather the connections of bhakti
between them, full of indescribable bliss, are thought to linger forever from that
moment
We shall find nothing of the kind in the AG. Kçùõa is mentioned at best as the
first of the narrators, the other narrators do not seem to remember his existence at all.
Arvind Sharma effectively illustrated the decline of theism in the AG by a com-
parison of two verses. The first one is from the BhG:
For whosoever look for refuge in Me, be they even born in sin, (be they even) women,
and vaiśyas, or śūdras – even such (people) go by the Highest way! How much more,
then, Brahmins with their religious merit, or royal sages, (My) bhaktas! (MBh 6,31
[BhG 9].32-33ab)22

A version of the same formula is contained in the first part of the AG (the initial
part, probably identical to the original AG which, seemingly, has the closest ties with
the BhG), although the differences are significant:
For those who establish themselves this way in the dharma – be they even born in sin,
(be they even) women, and vaiśyas, or śūdras – even such (people) go by the Highest
way! How much more, then, Brahmins, O Pārtha, or highly-learned kùatriyas, always
true to their svadharma, having brahmaloka as their highest aim! (MBh 14,19.56-
57.)23

It can be seen that the description of ideal adepts has changed: instead of those who
‘took refuge in God’, there are now ‘those who practice dharma in this way’ – and
from the context it is clear that ‘practising dharma this way’ implies striving to gain
immortality and bliss in the ‘eternal brahman’ (14,19.56). Also, instead of ‘royal
sages, (My) bhaktas’ highly-learned (bahuśrutāþ) kùatriyas appear in the AG,
devoted to their svadharma (we can see here a concession to the BhG’s kùatriyan
spirit) and, what is most important – brahmalokaparāyaõāþ ‘wholly aimed at obtain-
ing the world of (impersonal) brahman’. This means exactly what Arvind Sharma
sees in the passage: a decline of theism and an increase in the importance of jñāna.
Another example of the same kind can be drawn. The BhG mentions ‘three
puruùas’: kùara ‘perishable’(= all beings), akùara ‘imperishable’(= kūñastha) and the

———————
22
māü hi pārtha vyapāśritya ye ’pi syuþ pāpayonayaþ |
striyo vaiśyās tathā śūdrās te ’pi yānti parāü gatim || 32 ||
kiü punar brāhmaõāþ puõyā bhaktā rājarùayas tathā |
23
evaü hi dharmam āsthāya ye ’pi syuþ pāpayonayaþ |
striyo vaiśyās tathā śūdrās te ’pi yānti parāü gatim || 56 ||
kiü punar brāhmaõāþ pārtha kùatriyā vā bahuśrutāþ |
svadharmaratayo nityaü brahmalokaparāyaõāþ || 57 ||
 The Gītā versus the Anugītā 15

highest one (uttamaþ puruùaþ = paramātman = īśvara), who pervades and sustains
all the three worlds and who is none other than Kçùõa himself (MBh 6,37[BhG 15].
16-18). Significant is its difference from the AG, where the ‘three puruùas’ are:
kùara, akùara and amçta (MBh 14,18.26). The last term brings us back from the
Gītā’s concept of the divine Person as the highest principle to the impersonal ‘im-
mortality’ as an object of speculations in the Brāhmaõas and the Upaniùads and even
to the mythological image of the world tree with the source of a life-giving drink on
its top.24
It would be an oversimplification to assert that theism is dead or altogether
missing from the AG. In some of the Sāükhyayic lists of tattvas the AG identifies
one of the highest principles, – mahān ātman or puruùa, – with a cosmic divinity.
e.g., in MBh 14,25.17 the Brahmin says to his wife: ‘Learn from me that the god
Nārāyaõa is ātman of the universe’, or ‘ātman of everyone’ (sarvātman), which is
most probably an equivalent to the Sāükhya term bhūtātman. Elsewhere mahān
ātman, which had sprung from the avyakta (avyaktāt pūrvam utpanno) and then
produced everything else in the universe, is given such names as Viùnu and Śambhu
(Śiva), while it is at the same time identified with puruùa (14,40). But in comparison
with Kçùõa in the BhG, the highest transcendental God, embodied on earth in human
form, who, under his human name, stands higher than any god and any principle in
the universe, higher than brahman, than puruùa, who promises his yogins and his
bhaktas eternal bliss in His transcendental world – in comparison with him all these
cosmic divinities correlating with Sāükhya principles look simply as a step back-
wards, a return to a pre-Gītā stage in the development of Indian theism.25
The latest ‘editors’ of Book 14 could not fail to notice the absence in the AG of
the emotional bhaktic theism which had been a basic element of the BhG’s message
and which was probably their own type of religion as well. They tried therefore, in
the usual way, to counterbalance what they thought was an error. There are obvious
‘late bhaktic’26 interpolations right before the beginning of the AG and immediately
following its end. The words of Vaiśaüpāyana, ‘Thus the royal sage Yudhiùñhira ...
found consolation in the words of diverse kinds spoken by the ascetics rich in tapas’
(MBh 14,14.1) can only refer to chapters 14,2-10. These chapters contain a speech
of the ascetic par excellence – Vyāsa. But Vaiśaüpāyana’s words cannot refer to the
immediately preceding chapters 14,11-13 – a sermon preached by Kçùõa in which
———————
24
See, e.g., Vassilkov 1995: 44-45. It must be noted, however, that the theistic second half
of chapter 15 might well have belonged to the level of latest ‘bhaktic’ interpolations into
the Sāükhyayic last third of the BhG.
25
The Mokùadharma also contains a theistic version of Sāükhya which propounds Nārā-
yaõa as the 26th tattva (MBh 12,306; Brockington 1999: 485).
26
We must always bear in mind the need to distinguish in the BhG between the original
bhaktic theism of the Gītā’s core and the inserted late elements of the mediaeval bhakti,
triumphant after centuries of the gnostic Sāükhya’s dominance.
16 YAROSLAV VASSILKOV

again he touches on some basic ideas of the BhG.27 Immediately after the end of the
AG, the editors, as if wishing to provide the hardly theistic text with a summary,
inserted a glorification of Kçùõa as the God – creator of the world (MBh 14,51), and
a new revelation of his Universal Form (viśvarūpa, 14,54).

Karman and Saünyāsa: The Gītā versus the Anugītā

I would hardly say anything new by an assertion that the Gītā extols the correct,
disinterested action28 and aims its critique at some people, most probably Sāü-
khyayics, who preached an abstention from action. Suffice it to quote from Franklin
Edgerton:
In so far as the Gītā quarrels with what it calls the Sāükhya school, ... it is rather
because of the policy of complete abstention from actions which the Gītā attributes to
the followers of Sāükhya. This is directly opposed to the doctrine of activity with in-
difference, which the Gītā usually preaches with all possible force ... (Edgerton 1944:
69).

What really comes as a surprise is that the principle of non-action, censured by the
BhG, reappears, and in fact dominates in a much later text which claims to be the
Gītā’s ‘recapitulation’.
In the argument of the Gītā’s Yoga with Sāükhya over the matter of ‘action’ –
‘non-action’, which party remained true to the spirit of the original ancient Sāü-
khyayoga, and which one represented a ‘revisionist’ view? The data from the ChāU
3.17.1-5, which we shall discuss in detail below, points rather to the karmayogins as
‘traditionalists’ in this respect and to Sāükhyayics as ‘innovators’. In any case, the
karmayoga ‘undoubtedly existed [in the context of the Sāükhyayoga tradition – Ya.
V.] prior to the BhG’ (Feuerstein 1980: 174). But it was only in the BhG that the
original karmayoga passed through the filter of the heroic, warrior tradition (Vassil-
kov 1999: 31), was influenced by the royal ideology and eventually turned into that
rājavidyā ‘royal science of government and renouncement’ which constitutes such
an important element of Kçùõa’s sermon, that Angelika Malinar used the term in the
title of the best among the recently published monographs on the Gītā (Malinar
1996). In this special form of the niùkāmakarman concept proper to the Gītā, it is not
only natural everyday actions (eating, drinking etc.) and not only the undertakings of
———————
27
Liberation by way of the karmayoga is taught in 14,12.11-12, the BhG’s promise to
unsuccessful yogins that they could start from the same level in the next life is para-
phrased in 14,12.13, and the famous idea that if the spirit (here: sattva, not jīva or dehin)
is immortal, one can cut the bodies of living beings without violation of the ahiüsā
principle, is repeated in 14,13.5.
28
What may be defined by a somewhat later (not attested in the BhG itself) term niùkāma-
karman.
 The Gītā versus the Anugītā 17

asceticism (fasting, ‘inner sacrifices’ of the indriyas or the prāõas, etc.) that are
transformed into sacrificial acts and gain divine sanction; so too are deeds carried
out in social contexts, the actions of warriors and rulers. The idea applies particularly
to actions that are dictated by one’s social obligations, such as a warrior’s sva-
dharma, or actions directed towards the welfare of society, the universe, and all
humankind – towards everything which the Gītā puts into one meaningful word:
lokasaügraha.29
We can observe a very sharp contrast between the BhG and the AG. Sāükhya, as
it is represented in the AG, respects the old Sāükhyayoga legacy, accepting and
sometimes even praising non-interested action (see below), but at the same time it
strongly rejects any action motivated by social obligations. Let us compare how the
BhG and the AG treat lokasaügraha. In MBh 6,25[BhG 3].20 we read:
For it was exactly by action that Janaka and other (ancient kings) reached the Highest
Achievement (saüsiddhi). And you should better act having in view nothing but
lokasaügraha (welfare of human society and the universe).

The same idea is developed in MBh 6,25[BhG 3].25:

While witless people perform acts being attached to (the result), O Bhārata, wise men
should do their work being unattached, longing to bring about lokasaügraha.

The AG expresses exactly the opposite view:

Deeds connected with hope (for their fruits), deeds connected with violence, and the
obligation of maintaining lokasaügraha – these are the things that one should neither
do oneself, nor should cause anybody to do (MBh 14,46.37).30

Such violent rejection of social obligations would look very strange – if not viewed
in the context of the AG’s general outlook, which I hope to make more intelligible
towards the end of the article.
In the Gītā the God by his disinterested activity sets the standard for yogins, and
the karmayogins do the same for humans in general (BhG 3.21, 23-24). On the
contrary, the AG recommends the yogin to keep his achievements secret from com-
mon people: having overcome delusion, he must maintain the appearance of a de-
luded person for the outside world (MBh 14,46.50-51).
———————
29
The double (cosmic and social) meaning of the composite word lokasaügraha (‘main-
tanance of the universe and human society’) is predetermined both by the double mean-
ing of the component loka (or rather lokāþ 1. ‘worlds = universe’, 2. people) and by the
context in which the term lokasaügraha appears in the BhG. In the background there is
the idea that as God maintains order in the universe merely as his duty, without having
any interest in it, similarly, a king and a hero should act in order to maintain order in
society (see MBh 6,25[BhG 3].21-24).
30
āśīryuktāni karmāõi hiüsāyuktāni yāni ca |
lokasaügrahadharmaü ca naiva kuryān na kārayet || 37 ||
18 YAROSLAV VASSILKOV

It can be seen in some instances that the AG recognizes the usefulness of

disinterested activity when daily routine, ritual or ascetic acts are involved. Even in
the chapter which seems to be the latest addition to the AG (MBh 14,49) there are
stanzas illustrating this:
People, who tirelessly perform deeds, being motivated by the hope (for their fruits),
enjoy life in this world, (but then) are born again and again. But those wise men, who
perform deeds with faith, without hopes and being engaged in yoga – they are the true
sages with true vision. (MBh 14,49.5-6.)31

The dispute in 14,28 between an ascetic (yati), a preacher of ahiüsā, and an

adhvaryu, a priest sacrificing goats in traditional rites, is resolved in a compromise:
the adhvaryu will continue his professional activities and sacrifice goats, but at the
same time he will ‘think the right thought’ and then ‘there will be no harm’
(14,28.26). The story serves to illustrate the idea that if the action is performed
without an interest in its result, the Eternal (nitya) in the human soul will not get
caught into the ‘net of pleasures’ (14,28.4-5).
In MBh 14,32 the legendary Janaka, king of Mithilā, expresses a paradoxical
thought: he can’t call any piece of land in the world, including his inherited
janapada, his own, yet, at the same time he owns all the world. The first idea fits
well with Janaka’s image in the most popular MBh story connected with his name,
where he appears as a model saünyāsin who rejects the ephemeral world (MBh
12,170.18cd, 171.56cd, 268.4cd: ‘In the burning Mithilā nothing is on fire that
belongs to me ...’32). But the second part of the paradox, when Janaka explicates it,
immediately reminds us of MBh 6,25[BhG 3].20, where Janaka is mentioned among
ancient kings who gained release by means of controlled, disinterested actions (the
example is used in order to convince Arjuna of the necessity to practise
lokasaügraha). In the verses MBh 14,32.17-23 Janaka states that he always remains
indifferent to sensations, even when they have already penetrated into his indriyas:
this is the reason why he is the master of all elements. This makes him, in fact, a
model karmayogin who stays in the world and ‘roves among the objects of senses’
(MBh 6,24[BhG 2].64), performing actions. The final verse of the Janaka episode in
the AG defines him as ‘the only turner of the wheel (which has Brahman for its
nave, sattva for its felly, etc.)’ (MBh 14,32.25). This cannot fail to remind us of
MBh 6,25[BhG 3].16, where a karmayogin is said to keep the wheel of the world
revolving. To conclude, the Janaka episode in MBh 14,32 represents the nearest
approximation to the true sprit of the Gītā‘s karmayoga throughout the AG.
———————
31
āśīryuktāni karmāõi kurvate ya tv atandritāþ |
te ’smiül loke pramodante jāyamānāþ punaþ punaþ || 5 ||
kurvate ye tu karmāõi śraddadhānā vipaścitaþ |
anāśīr yogasaüyuktās te dhīrāþ sādhudarśinaþ || 6 ||
32
mithilāyāü pradīptāyāü na me dahyati kiücana ||
 The Gītā versus the Anugītā 19

At the same time, elsewhere in the AG we come across manifestations of a dif-

ferent, extremist attitude to action (karman), implying its total rejection, a total ab-
stention from it (saünyāsa). The first two examples are from the Kāśyapa – siddha
dialogue, the initial part and the hypothetical ‘core’ of the AG:
The one who is inclined to the ‘narrow way’,33 silent and thinking nothing, renouncing
one by one all things of the past, such man will be a (true) ‘non-doer’ (lit. ‘one not-
commencing’, ‘not-beginning’) (MBh 14,19.1).34

(One who), actionless and devoid of desires, sees this world as ephemeral, similar to
the (inverted) aśvattha and always deluded by new births in saüsāra, (a man) whose
mind (buddhi) is full of aversion (to the world), who is always on check against the
evil of any distress – (such man) does not need much time in order to free the ātman
from bonds (MBh 14,19.8-9).35

The word translated as ‘actionless’ (akarmā) may have here, as in the BhG, a double
meaning: ‘actionless’, ‘not acting’ – and ‘free from karmic burden’. The first mean-
ing is basic. It correlates with the general, anti-worldly and asocial attitude of the
whole passage.
The passages of this kind in the AG sometimes seem to be polemically turned
against the teaching of karmayoga in the Gītā:
Some people – most stupid of all – praise (action); but those who are wise and great in
spirit do not praise action. Through the action a living being is born, embodied, his
nature consisting of 16 parts. Wisdom produces puruùa, difficult-to-grasp, the eater of
amçta. That is why those people who see (the things) beyond (this world) are not fond
of actions. This puruùa is made out of Wisdom, not out of actions – so they say. (MBh
14,50.30-32.)36

A discussion of the relative validity of action as opposed to non-action is the main

topic of the second discourse in the AG – the saüvāda between a Brahmin devoted
to gnosis (jñānavijñānapāraga), and his wife who blames him for doing nothing, for
———————
33
Here, probably, in the sense of rigid ascetic rules.
34
yaþ syād ekāyane līnas tūùõīü kiücid acintayan |
pūrvaü pūrvaü parityajya sa nirārambhako bhavet || 1 ||
35
akarmā cāvikāïkùaś ca paśyañ jagad aśāśvatam |
aśvatthasadçśaü nityaü janmasaüsāramohitam || 8 ||
vairāgyabuddhiþ satataü tāpadoùavyapekùakaþ |
ātmabandhavinirmokùaü sa karoty acirād iva || 9 ||
I prefer the reading of several mss aśvatthasadçśaü to asvastham avaśaü in the CE,
which seems to be the lectio facilior.
36
kecit praśaüsanti mandabuddhitarā narāþ |
ye tu buddhā mahātmāno na praśaüsanti karma te || 30 ||
karmaõā jāyate jantur mūrtimān ùoóaśātmakaþ |
puruùaü sçjate vidyā agrāhyam amçtāśinam || 31 ||
tasmāt karmasu niþsnehā ye kecit pāradarśinaþ |
vidyāmayo ’yaü puruùo na tu karmamayaþ smçtaþ || 32 ||
20 YAROSLAV VASSILKOV

abstaining even from ritual activity. She is worried about her own destiny after
death: the wife must follow her husband to the world which he obtains by his pious
deeds; but what can she expect for herself if she has a husband who sits in medi-
tation doing nothing at all, ignoring his ritual obligations (14,20.1-4: nyastakarmā-
õam āsīnaü)? His answer contains an attack against those who try to use actions for
a good purpose. The attack is most probably directed against the karmayogins:
People devoid of jñāna, by way of action only add to their delusion. In this world of
the embodied beings no naiùkarmya is possible, as is well known. (MBh 14,20.7.)37

As in the BhG, the word naiùkarmya undoubtedly bears a double meaning: firstly,
the absence of action itself and secondly, the absence of its karmic consequences.
The Brahmin’s argument goes as follows: because all actions bring their karmic con-
sequences and are, when directed towards external objects, spoiled by the devils, he
prefers to look into himself in order to contemplate there ātman and brahman, and
to worship the akùara. A somewhat chaotic exposition of Sāükhya doctrines and
several inserted itihāsas come next, including, in particular, the story of Alarka – a
king who eventually came to total indifference regarding the matters of his state and
the welfare of his subjects and who devoted himself wholly to esoteric knowledge
and yoga. The story of king Ambarīùa preaches a similar moral: one has to suppress
any urge to activity (particularly public, royal activity); the only kingdom which
should be conquered is the inner kingdom of ātman, whereas knowledge (vidyā;
14,31.11-12) is a means of conquering it. At the end of the discourse with his wife
the Brahmin concludes that any action whatsoever constitutes an obstacle on a spir-
itual path, and he avers that in spite of being inactive, he, in fact, has already con-
quered all the universe with his thought (buddhi; 14,33.2-8). Janaka’s sermon in
MBh 14,32.17-25 looks like an unexpected karmayogic interpolation in the sequence
of ascetic and gnostic (Sāükhyayic) texts.
Numerous verses in the BhG seem to be directly aimed against such a position.
See, e.g.:
One who without care about fruits of action performs necessary work – he is a (true)
sanyāsīn and a (true) yogin, not the one who does not build his (sacrificial) fire and
does not work at all (MBh 6,28.1).38

All this (‘does not build his fire’, ‘does not work’) could well be referred to the
Brahmin of the AG (chapters 20-34), but in reality it is said about some of his spir-
itual predecessors. Kçùõa’s irony in 6,25.6 might well be addressed to the same
Brahmin:
———————
37
moham eva niyacchanti karmaõā jñānavarjitāþ |
naiùkarmyaü na ca loke ’smin maurtam ity upalabhyate || 7 ||
38
anāśritaþ karmaphalaü kāryaü karma karoti yaþ |
sa saünyāsī ca yogī ca na niragnir na cākriyaþ || 1 ||
 The Gītā versus the Anugītā 21

A man who sits, having suppressed the indriyas of action, but in his mind still re-
members the arthas of the sense objects, a man whose spirit is deluded, is referred to
as ‘one who lives in vain’ (MBh 6,25.6).39

Whereas the Brahmin in the AG (14,20.7) proclaims that naiùkarmya is not possible
in this world, stops all his activities and leaves this world for the ‘Kingdom of
ātman’ within himself, the BhG considers the idea wrong:
A man never enjoys naiùkarmya as a result of mere abstention from work, and saü-
nyasana is not enough for obtaining the highest perfection (MBh 6,25[BhG 3].4).40

In the final summary of the BhG’s teaching (in the bhaktic part of chapter 18 [MBh
6,40]), the obligations of different varõas (their svadharmas) are described (40.45-
48). If a man fulfills his social duties painstakingly and regards all his deeds as a
tribute to God (40.46), if his buddhi is detached from everything, if his self is sub-
dued, and he is free from desires, then he, through the (true) saünyāsa, reaches the
highest perfection of naiùkarmya (MBh 6,40[BhG 18].49).41 Here, again the Gītā
seems to contradict the Brahmin’s statement in the AG, according to which no
naiùkarmya is possible anywhere in this world (MBh 14,20.7). Gītā claims that the
highest perfection of naiùkarmya can be reached through non-interested actions and
through true saünyāsa, the saünyāsa in the special sense formulated by the Gītā:
not as the karmasaünyāsa, in the Sāükhyayic sense (see 6,27.2), but karmaphala-
saünyāsa, the dedication of all actions to God (see 6,25.30, 27.12, 34.6, 40.57).
Interestingly, the achievement of this perfection takes place here, in this world,
because in the description of the BhG, it marks only a starting point in the ascension
of a yogin to the state of brahman (MBh 14,[BhG 18]40.50-53). Then, through the
‘highest bhakti’, the ascension continues to God and to His ‘eternal, changeless
abode’ (40.55-56).
There is only one passage in the BhG where we can surmise that the ideal of
nivçtti and total abstention from action is preached – MBh 6,36[BhG 14].23-25: the
yogin, sitting in meditation, being absolutely indifferent to everything around him,
must not move (23: neïgate) and has to refrain from any undertakings (25: sarvā-
rambhaparityāgī). But this may be understood in the sense that the yogin merely is
not allowed to act on his own initiative (doing only obligatory work) and should not
yield to the pressure of the guõas (23: guõair ... na vicālyate). Even if the principle
of nivçtti is really implied here, we should not forget that the passage belongs to the
14th adhyāya, i.e. to the 3rd ùañka which, taken as a whole, represents the indepen-
———————
39
karmendriyāõi saüyamya ya āste manasā smaran |
indriyārthān vimūóhātmā mithyācāraþ sa ucyate || 6 ||
40
na karmaõām anārambhān naiùkarmyaü puruùo ’śnute |
na ca saünyasanād eva siddhiü samadhigacchati || 4 ||
41
asaktabuddhiþ sarvatra jitātmā vigataspçhaþ |
naiùkarmyasiddhiü paramāü saünyāsenādhigacchati || 49 ||
22 YAROSLAV VASSILKOV

dent, gnostic Sāükhya and contains many concepts contradicting the basic message
of the Gītā.
The BhG makes it more or less clear that the rival conception of saünyāsa as a
total abstention from action belongs to Sāükhya as a trend of thought (see, e.g., the
beginning of chapter 3 – MBh 6.25.1-6). Sāükhya in the AG, in its turn, directly
connects Yoga with the teaching and practice of action:
Yoga is characterized by external activity (pravçtti), whereas jñāna (= Saükhya) is
marked by saünyāsa. Therefore, let the man with a (correctly directed) buddhi, who
has put jñāna before everything else, reject (everything) in this world. A saünyāsin,
endowed with Knowledge, obtains the highest path, and, after death, comes to (the
place) where there are no pairs of opposites, where darkness, death and old age are
overcome. (MBh 14,43.24cd-25.)42

What makes these two stanzas, quoted in their natural sequence, particularly interest-
ing, is that in them the principle of saünyāsa as abstention from any actions (contra-
ry to yoga as the way of action) is closely connected with a specific way of libera-
tion: liberation through Knowledge, Wisdom or Gnosis (jñāna) after death (atīta). If
this is true, it would be reasonable to ask a question: Can it be that all other specific
features of the Sāükhya with which the Gītā disagrees, and of the Sāükhya repre-
sented in the AG, are predetermined by the concept and practice of liberation spe-
cific to this trend of thought? Can the emergence of the ‘Liberation through Know-
ledge’ concept have triggered the split between Sāükhya and Yoga? It seems to be
worthwhile now to investigate the particular form in which that concept appears in
the AG.

A Reason for the Split: A New Road to Liberation

Following Schreiner, I believe that in the Mahābhārata ‘Yoga was first’, implying
particularly the Sāükhyayoga, i.e. as Schreiner suggests, ‘the Sāükhya (type of)
Yoga’, or, as it is traditionally understood, ‘the Yoga with enumeration’ or ‘the
Yoga with the classification of tattvas’. Within this tradition there were yogins who
practised yoga, and sāükhyas, or Sāükhyayics, who fixed the results of their yoga
practice, who tried to find correlations between yogins’ inner visions and the
traditional schemes of mythical cosmology (such as, e.g., the world-tree pattern),
who talked about yoga and about the psychic and transcendental world. The Sāü-
khyayics were intellectuals, according to Schreiner: ‘thinkers with a liking for num-
bers and classifications (but afraid of the ‘existential’ commitment to a path of Yoga
———————
42
pravçttilakùaõo yogo jñānaü saünyāsalakùaõam || 24 ||
tasmāj jñānaü puraskçtya saünyased iha buddhimān |
saünyāsī jñānasaüyuktaþ prāpnoti paramāü gatim |
atīto ’dvaüdvam abhyeti tamomçtyujarātigam || 25 ||
 The Gītā versus the Anugītā 23

which would lead to death and through dying, literally or spiritually)’. Schreiner
suggests that it was the Sāükhyayics who were the ones labelled yogabhraùña in the
Gītā – people who failed to reach the goal of no return, unsuccessful yogins (6,28
[BhG 6].41; Schreiner:1999: 776). It can be added that they are also called ayatiþ
‘not ascetics (by their nature)’, and yogāc calitamānasaþ – ‘people whose manas
deviated from yoga’ (6,28[BhG 6].37). It can be suggested that the Sāükhyayics
themselves could have thought that they played the leading and guiding role in the
Sāükhyayoga tradition , and could have looked down on the ‘primitive’, ‘irrational’
yogins.
Every great spiritual movement in India, in its beginning, is based on the inner
yogic experience of its founder, who invites disciples to follow his example. When
the number of followers grows, it becomes clear that the ‘narrow way’ of yogic
experiments, bequeathed by the teacher to the followers, is beyond the capabilities of
the overwhelming majority of them. Thus, the members of the community begin to
look for ‘shortcuts’ to the highest goal.
In the development of the Sāükhyayoga tradition a day may have arrived when
the Sāükhyayics, those proud intellectuals, the keepers of Knowledge, found them-
selves free, independent of Yoga and yogins because they had discovered, or be-
lieved that had discovered, their own way of liberation from saüsāra – the way of
liberation by pure Knowledge.
The role of Knowledge in the process of liberation is discernible in all parts of
the AG, but is particularly evident in the third and final part (a sermon preached by
Brahmā, chapters 35-50). The stanza MBh 14,43.25 about a saünyāsin who over-
comes death and obtains the highest path due to the liberating Knowledge which he
possesses, has been quoted above. More examples can be provided:
Not buddhi, nor sense organs, nor gods, nor Vedas, nor sacrifices, nor (holy) men, nor
asceticism, nor heroism can lead to that place, which the owners of Knowledge reach
... (MBh 14,46.48a-e).43
One, who knows pradhāna, guõas and (all) tattvas, who comprehended the Law
ordained for all beings, who is free from the concept of ‘mine’ and from the feeling of
‘ego’ – will be liberated, no doubt! (MBh 14,47.9.)44

It is still not very clear in what particular way the Sāükhya knowledge, consisting
mostly in the mastery of the cosmogonic schemes and in the enumeration of the
tattvas, was used for the final release. The precise answer is given in MBh 14,46.52-
55, where a specific Sāükhya process of liberation is described in detail:
———————
43
na tatra kramate buddhir nendriyāõi na devatāþ |
vedā yajñāś ca lokāś ca na tapo na parākramaþ |
yatra jñānavatāü prāptir ... || 48 ||
44
pradhānaguõatattvajñaþ sarvabhūtavidhānavit |
nirmamo nirahaükāro mucyate nātra saüśayaþ || 9 ||
24 YAROSLAV VASSILKOV

Sense organs and their arthas, and five gross elements, manas, buddhi, ātman,
avyakta and puruùa – having enumerated (prasaükhyāya) all this and having
renounced (all) in the proper way, pure, free from all bonds he then obtains Heaven.
At the hour of death (antavelāyām) having enumerated (parisaükhyāya) exactly this,
let the knower of tattvas concentrate in meditation on a single point – then he will be
liberated without any support (nirāśrayaþ). Free from all affections, like the wind
blowing in the sky, Having shed the worn out husk (of his body), forgetting all
suffering forever, he reaches the Highest Abode. (MBh 14,46.52-55.)45

This is a new road to liberation: a mental enumeration, on one’s deathbed, of a cer-

tain set of Sāükhyayic tattvas will suffice. If Sāükhya knowledge had been success-
fully implanted into the human brain, it should work at the moment of death, and
liberation will be reached almost without effort.
It can be suggested that this point marked the beginning of Sāükhya’s indepen-
dent existence.46 True, the new way of liberation differed significantly from the long
and painful path of Yoga. The consequences of the new idea of ‘liberation on one's
death bed’ must have been truly revolutionary and, also, most destructive for the
Sāükhyayoga tradition. The idea, nevertheless, did not emerge from nothing. Like
the BhG, with its karmayoga and theism that must have developed very old trends of
thought in the ancient Sāükhyayoga, the Sāükhya concept of the death-bed libera-
tion by Knowledge too had very old and deep roots.

Sāükhyayoga and the Chāndogya-Upaniùad

Let us get back to the text that was previously rendered as a sample of the earliest
formulation of the Sāükhyayoga principles in Sanskrit literature: the sermon of
Ghora Āïgirasa to his disciple, Kçùõa Devakīputra in ChāU 3.17.1-6. It is worth-
while to quote the whole passage in question:
1. When he is hungry, when he is thirsty, when he abstains from pleasures – this is
his initiatory rite (dīkùā).

———————
45
indriyāõīndriyārthāüś ca mahābhūtāni pañca ca |
mano buddhir athātmānam avyaktaü puruùaü tathā || 52 ||
sarvam etat prasaükhyāya samyak saütyajya nirmalaþ |
tataþ svargam avāpnoti vimuktaþ sarvabandhanaiþ || 53 ||
etad evāntavelāyāü parisaükhyāya tattvavit |
dhyāyed ekāntam āsthāya mucyate ’tha nirāśrayaþ || 54 ||
nirmuktaþ sarvasaïgebhyo vāyur ākāśago yathā |
kùīõakośo nirātaïkaþ prāpnoti paramaü padam || 55 ||
46
But not yet as a ‘philosophy’. In the words of Schreiner, ‘we need not speak of
“philosophy” where certain metaphysical assumptions are part of a way to salvation’
(Schreiner 1999: 776). As it seems, there is only one way to define the epic Sāükhya: as
a soteriological doctrine of the gnostic type.
 The Gītā versus the Anugītā 25

2. And when he eats, when he drinks, when he enjoys pleasures – he then partici-
pates in the upasad rites (joyful offerings).
3. And when he smiles, when he laughs, when he copulates – this are then (his)
singing the hymns and reading.
4. Also his tapas, charity, sincerity, non-violence (ahiüsā) and his truthful speech –
this is his dakùiõā (gifts to the priests).
5. That is why when they say: ‘will give birth’, ‘has given birth’ – this is his new
birth.47 Death is his final ablution (avabhçtha).
6. So, having said this to Kçùõa Devakīputra, Ghora Āïgirasa, who had became free
from any desire (apipāsa), said (more): ‘At the time of death (antavelāyām) let
them use (?) these three (formulae): ‘Thou art Non-perishable (akùitam)’, ‘Thou
art Unshakeable (acyutam)’, ‘Thou art Animated-by-Life (? prāõasaüśitam)’.
The Russian Indologist Vsevolod S. Sementsov (1941-1986) convincingly demon-
strated in his book on the BhG that the Chāndogya-Upaniùad is connected with the
BhG not only by its use of Kçùõa’s name (in one case – a disciple, in another – a
teacher and the God), but by some other links (Sementsov 1985: 16). The sermon
obviously falls into two parts. In the first part (17.1-5) Ghora Āïgirasa teaches his
pupil Kçùõa, son of Devakī, how to turn all his life, with all its daily and ritual
actions, into a permanent sacrifice. Initially it was merely a technique invented by
the Brahmins dwelling in the forest in order to fulfil their priestly duties, even in the
circumstances which made performance of real sacrifices impossible, by way of
doing all sacrificial actions symbolically. But in the same Upaniùadic period, under
the influence of the new mokùa ideal, there emerged the idea that a sacrifice (or, at
least, an obligatory, nitya sacrifice) does not produce any karmic consequences (cf.
BhG 3.9). If we take this into account the teaching of Ghora Āïgirasa looks very
much like the seed out of which the tree of the Gītā’s karmayoga grew. In addition,
there are some verbal (terminological) correspondences between ChāU 3.17 and the
BhG: e.g. the term ahiüsā does not appear anywhere else in the Upaniùads, but
appears in four instances in the Gītā (MBh 6,32[BhG 10.].5, 35[BhG 13].7, 38[BhG
16].2, 39[BhG 17].14).
At this particular point of our reasoning it is important to note that Ghora
Āïgirasa, in his speech, stresses one more idea: a necessity of remembering or pro-
nouncing certain sacred formulae (mantras) at the moment of death (ChāU 3.17.6).
The idea of a proper effort and the use of proper mantras at the moment of death
reappears later in the BhG (MBh 6,30[BhG 8].10, 13). Sementsov was able to find
———————
47
‘New birth’ (punarutpādana) most probably has a double meaning here. In the life cycle
a new-born son was considered to be a reproduction of his father. What seems to be
most important in the context, in certain rituals, as e.g. dīkùā, the initiated was thought
to have been reborn for a new life after the temporary death.
26 YAROSLAV VASSILKOV

even a verbal correspondence between akùitam asi of ChāU 3.17.6 and om ity
ekākùaraü brahma vyāharan of MBh 6,30[BhG 8].13 (Sementsov 1985: 16). A
possibility of a certain liberating effort at the hour of death is also implied in MBh
6,24[BhG 2].72, where it is said that even at the moment of death (antakāle ’pi) for a
yogin there is a possibility to enter into a ‘brahmic state’ (brāhmī sthiti) which will
guarantee the attainment of the ‘nirvāõa of Brahman’. The BhG, however, views
such a case as an exception: usually a successful yogin gained liberation (became
mukta) during his lifetime (see, e.g., MBh 6,26[BhG 4].23), whereas his posthumous
destiny had only to confirm his status (although certain precautions, such as the use
of proper mantras, could be of some help too).
The development of the same idea in the gnostic Sāükhya tradition took a dif-
ferent direction. Here the liberation itself takes place at the moment of death due to
the use of a specific Sāükhya technique: ‘enumerating’ in the memory all the tattvas
and renouncing them one by one (see above, MBh 14,46.52-55). The AG passage
shows itself to be connected to the Chāndogya-Upaniùad: in particular, the key
expression antavelāyām ‘at the hour of death’, from ChāU 3.17.6, reappears at MBh
14,46.54, but nowhere in other Vedic Upaniùads (Jacob 1891), which makes it one
more direct link between the teaching of Ghora Āïgirasa and the Sāükhyayoga texts
in the Mahābhārata. However, the old Sāükhyayogic idea of using certain mantras
at the hour of death underwent, in the gnostic Sāükhya, a revolutionary develop-
ment. For centuries Yoga and Sāükhya developed two different aspects of the same
old Sāükhyayoga tradition. Yogins followed the line of karmayoga and in the Gītā
(probably under the influence of the kùatriyan worldview of the Epic48) included in
the sphere of ‘disinterested action’ even social and political activity. Sāükhya culti-
vated old Sāükhyayogic Knowledge, or Wisdom, and eventually came to the con-
clusion that Knowledge itself could lead directly to liberation. But the new Sāükhya
concept of liberation by Knowledge at the hour of death brought the idea to the point
where it came into conflict with some basic principles of the Sāükhyayoga tradition.
If it is possible to obtain liberation exclusively by Knowledge at the time of
death, is there, then, any need in yoga? Since that moment the inner, contemplative
yoga had been destined to play a subordinate role in the Sāükhya, as a mere tech-
nical means used to implant Sāükhya’s classifications and basic concepts into the
mind as deep as possible. The attitude to the external yogic activity varied. Some-
times the Sāükhyayics traditionally paid respect to the disinterested yogic action,
———————
48
If we accept the suggestion by V. Vertogradova and V. Shokhin that the name designat-
ing a group of early Sāükhya thinkers mentioned in the Yuktidīpikā (vārùagaõāþ) does
not refer to (or not only) the followers of the legendary teacher Vārùagaõya, but to a
group of the sāükhyas who gathered during the rainy season at the tīrthas (Shokhin
1985: 179), it may lead us to another suggestion: that the first meeting of the epic tradi-
tion with Sāükhyayoga may have taken place at the tīrthas (on the important role play-
ed by the places of pilgrimage in the growth of the MBh see Vassilkov 2002).
 The Gītā versus the Anugītā 27

sometimes they vigorously rejected it, because any kind of action was considered
harmful. In fact, Sāükhya viewed ‘action’ and ‘Wisdom’ as a pair of opposites (cf.
above, MBh 14,50.32). Viewed from the new angle, even sacrifices and daily ritual
acts, such as the building of the sacred fire etc., were thought to be useless. The new
religious ideal is represented in the AG by the Brahmin, who is a preacher in chap-
ters 20-54: he has stopped performing all daily rites and is sitting still, cherishing
one thought: that he is the all-pervading spirit, king of the universe. We have seen
that for the authors of the AG, an action aimed at the welfare and integrity of the
society was particularly intolerable.
Another principle which the Sāükhyayics no longer needed and could well
dispose of, was īśvara, the God. It was old yogins looking for a path to the light of
liberation in the dark tunnels and blind alleys of the unconscious, who really needed
īśvara. On their way – in the words of Peter Schreiner – ‘to death and through dying,
literally or spiritually’, the yogins needed īśvara as a kind of iùñadevatā to whom
they could appeal with a prayer or with his special mantra Oü in the moments of
despair.49 When Patañjali included īśvara in his Sāükhya-based Yoga philosophy,
the system which, in fact, had no need of īśvara, he did it, as Mircea Eliade remarks,
because he could not ignore the experiential reality: the yogins did in fact appeal to
īśvara (Eliade 1969: 75-76). But this happened as the result of a much later compro-
mise: the original gnostic Sāükhya, as we know it from the texts of the Mahābhāra-
ta, was non-theistic. In the above-quoted verse from the AG (14,46.54) the follower
of Sāükhya is said to have obtained deliverance through the knowledge of classi-
fication lists ‘without any support’ (nirāśrayaþ) – which most probably means here
‘without support of īśvara’ (cf. words of Kçùõa madāśrayaþ ‘having support in me’
in BhG 7.1). The yogins, on their part, in their polemics with Sāükhya, rhetorically
asked: anīśvaraþ katþaü mucyet ‘How can a godless one gain deliverance?’ (MBh
12,289.3).

Further Development: Sāükhya and Yoga in Conflict and Dialogue

In the light of this hypothetical reconstruction, the BhG (or, more precisely, its core)
looks like an authentic document of a reformation in the proper sense of the word,
i.e. an attempt to turn back to the real or imaginary sources of the tradition. The BhG
most certainly tried to restore the integrity of the Sāükhyayoga (‘Sāükhya and Yoga
are one!’) and to revive the old Sāükhyayoga theism, but on an essentially new level,
due to the emergence of Kçùõa (Bhāgavata) theology.50 The BhG also developed to
———————
49
It is probably not without significance in this connection that in the epic popular world-
view īśvara appears to be another name for Dhātç (Dhātā), the god of personal fate
(Vassilkov 2001b).
28 YAROSLAV VASSILKOV

perfection, on an old Sāükhyayoga basis, the concept of karmayoga, especially as

disinterested activity in the military, political and social spheres, in obvious polemics
with Sāükhya which tended to deny that any form of action had any value for the
aim of liberation, or at least proclaimed the royal ideal of lokasaügraha useless and
harmful on the way to deliverance.
All reformatory movements in India share a common lot. A new teaching is
seldom attacked openly: it is usually formally accepted, but soon begins to be over-
grown with shells of traditional reinterpretations. Its key terms are reinterpreted in
the old traditional ways. The BhG itself did this to some Sāükhya’s key notions, and
put its own meaning into such terms as saünyāsa, jñānayoga, naiùkarmya etc.
Centuries later, the AG repeats the trick and reinterprets the same words in its own
traditional way: e.g. saünyāsa is, again, not a rejection of the fruits of action and
sacrificing them to the God, but abstention from any activity; jñānayoga is not a
mental component of the karmayoga, the meaning it often has in the BhG, but is
used, again, in the sense of learning, memorizing and interiorizing the sacred Know-
ledge. If the Gītā is a document of a reformation, the AG may serve as a perfect
example of a covert Indian counter-reformation, or of the intellectualistic, gnostic,
Sāükhyayic revanche against Gītā’s yogic theism.
After the Gītā came into being, Sāükhya could not remain unchanged.. The
classical, philosophical form of the Sāükhya disowned some of the extremes charac-
teristic of the initial gnostic Sāükhya. Inside the Sāükhya there existed, until at least
8th century AD, some groups which admitted the existence of īśvara (Bronkhorst
1983; Hattori 1999). In the classical Sāükhya texts the idea of liberation by
Knowledge at the hour of death, as far as I can judge, does not appear (at least, in the
same form as in the AG). Instead, liberation is described as a long process of mental
purification and discrimination. The notion of the ‘liberated-while-living’ (jīvan-
mukta) becomes fully accepted (Larson & Bhattacharya 1987: 353, 411-412). It also
goes without saying that both Gītā and Anugītā contain examples of the compromise
between Sāükhya and the theistic Sāükhyayoga of the Gītā.

Final Remarks: Sāükhya and Yoga in the General Scheme of

Philosophical Development in India
But why did the Gītā’s Sāükhyayoga and the independent, gnostic Sāükhya not
sever all ties after growing as far apart as they did? Why did they try to reach a com-

50
It surely met with some strong resistance. The BhG speaks about some ‘fools’, people of
useless wisdom (moghajnāna) who do not believe in God’s human incarnation, do not
know Kçùõa’s highest state as the bhūtātmeśvara, but instead turn to rākùasic, āsuric, de-
luding prākçti (MBh 6,31[BhG 9].12). Are not the Sāükhyayics meant here again?
 The Gītā versus the Anugītā 29

promise for centuries, in spite of trading harsh polemics? It is impossible to answer

this question without first taking a look at the general line of development of reli-
gious philosophies in early India.
The specific feature of the major Indian religio-philosophical schools is their
close connection with yoga as a practice of meditation. As Edward Conze pointed
out in the introductory chapter of his classic Buddhist Thought in India, European
and Indian philosophies ‘presuppose two different systems of practice as their un-
questioned foundations’: Europeans treat scientific data as the chief raw material for
philosophical reflection, ancient Indians used for the same purpose data of the yogic
experience (Conze 1962: 17-21). All ‘schools’ of early Indian thought, except the
materialistic Cārvāka, based their ‘ontogenetic models’ on yoga. These models ‘were
originally and primarily maps for meditative introspection, intended to guide the
yogin in his exploration of the terra incognita of the mind’ (Feuerstein 1980: 117).
This fact helps to explain why these models often contradict, but never deny each
other. The leaders of these early ‘schools’ were yogins who realized that rival ‘onto-
genetic models’ were based on different kinds of yogic experience. At this early
period, the validity of ‘rivals'’ yogic experience, as it seems, was never put to doubt.
The contradictions between the visions of reality were ignored, in accordance with
the old Vedic maxim: ‘To what is One, sages give many a title’ (èV 1,164.46). This
is why there was no antagonism between different ‘schools’ and in the eyes of the
contemporaries they remained, as it seems, constituents of a single tradition, equal
approaches to the ultimate truth.
In the period of the ‘middle’ and ‘late’ Vedic Upaniùads out of this amorphous,
unstructured mass there emerged two major ‘onthogenetic models’ and two basic
routes to liberation: proto-Vedānta and Sāükhyayoga. The former designated the
ultimate subjective reality by the term ātman, whereas the term for the ultimate ob-
jective, external reality was brahman. The latter preferred to call the ultimate subjec-
tive principle puruùa, and the external objective reality (avyakta, prakçti, pradhāna),
whereas at least some of the early Sāükhyayoga ‘schools’ subordinated both these
principles to the highest ultimate reality: God. Madeleine Biardeau (1994: 26) re-
marks correctly that the proto-Vedānta and Sāükhyayoga ‘were perhaps not clearly
distinguished’ for their contemporaries and, probably, for the early thinkers them-
selves. Each ‘system’ freely borrowed specific notions and terms from the rivals, and
reinterpreted them in the light of its own ideas. The two vocabularies (Vedāntic and
Sāükhyayogic) are used in the Upaniùads concurrently and interrelatedly, sometimes
even indiscriminately. The proto-Vedānta texts sometimes use, e.g., the term puruùa
to designate ātman or even brahman; as is well-known, the concept of prakçti with
its tattvic structure, the guõas etc. was gradually adopted not only by Vedānta, but
by all other major schools of Indian thought. On the other hand, the Sāükhyayoga,
as we can see, e.g., in the BhG, used the term ātman as the synonym of dehin or
30 YAROSLAV VASSILKOV

puruùa, and the term brahman as the synonym of prakçti, which made many scholars
believe in the presence of the Advaitavedāntic element in the Gītā (see, e.g., White:
1979).51
Within the complex of Sāükhyayoga there existed a great variety of teachings,
but the basic distinction – as we can see in the Mokùadharma – was recognized to be
between Sāükhya and Yoga schools. In this context sāükhya and yoga do not mean
merely ‘theory’ and ‘practice’: the Yogic texts, as we know them from the BhG and
Mokùadharma, have a kind of ‘theory’ of their own, at least their own particular
vision of reality, whereas the Sāükhya texts in the AG and the Mokùadharma do pay
some attention to the yogic practice of meditation, though they put much less empha-
sis on it. The epic Sāükhya and Yoga share one common ‘ontogenetic model’, at
least with regard to the multi-layered structure of the phenomenal world, the ‘in-
verted tree’ of brahman, or prakçti, viewed as if from the two opposite sides; but, in
contrast with Sāükhya and Yoga of classical period, the epic versions have no
significant differences in terminology (the names of the tattvas). This can serve a
powerful argument in favor of Sāükhya being initially a speculative superstructure
built on the basis of the yoga practice.
In the Mahābhārata Sāükhya and Yoga are recognized repeatedly as the two
branches of a single method, or their complementarity is stressed (e.g., sometimes a
need is felt to present a certain topic first ‘according to Sāükhya’ and then ‘accord-
ing to Yoga’; MBh 6,24[BhG 2].39; 12,339.21).
In the same epic period divergence occurred. Each of the great Indian religious
traditions makes a start as a blurred indistinct image of the ultimate truth gained by
its founder in his yogic introspective experience. Over the course of time, the teach-
ing, due, as it seems, to the inevitable biological changes in the human brain, be-
comes more and more rationalized. Logical analysis of the archetypal image triggers
off centrifugal forces. Thus, the philosophical reflection on the original vision of the
Buddha – the image of ‘interdependent co-arising’ and the ‘wheel of existence’ –
resulted in the split of the philosophical Buddhism into several antagonistic schools:
Sarvāstivāda, Mādhyamika, Yogācāra and tathāgatagarbha theory. The Upaniùadic
proto-Vedānta fell apart into the Advaita of Śaïkara and the theistic Vedānta of
Rāmānuja. Similarly, the independent non-theistic Sāükhya emerges during the epic
period out of the syncretistic Sāükhyayoga, and the process leads eventually to the
disintegration of the latter into Kçùõaite bhakti cults, Pañcarātra, classical Yoga of
Patañjali and Sāükhya of Īśvarakçùõa. The differences between some of these

———————
51
In fact, the worldview of the BhG’s core is the theistic Sāükhyayoga, which has surely
very much in common with the theistic Vedānta (such as the Viśiùñādvaita of Rāmānuja
in later times), but the influence of the Advaita may be supposed only for some contexts
in the late 13th adhyāya (MBh 6,35[BhG 13].4, 12-17).
 The Gītā versus the Anugītā 31

‘schools’ within Hinduism are no less significant than those between, e.g., Islam and
Christianity.
At this point any religion of the western type would split into several in-
dependent religions, but Hinduism did not. Some centripetal force must have been at
work in the system, its source being, as it seems, the practice of yoga that was
inherent as a fundamental constituent of most schools. It was impossible to refute
one’s opponents’ points of view as completely wrong, because the leader of each
school, an advanced yogin, realized that another school’s teaching was based on a
certain experiential foundation.52 The integrity of Buddhism was saved by Nāgārju-
na’s formulation of the ‘two levels of truth’ (the conditioned and the highest) and by
the Yogācāra concept of the ‘three turns of the Dharma’s wheel’, which was soon
accepted and reinterpreted by the other schools. In Hinduism the same role was play-
ed by Śaïkarācārya, with his theory of different levels of truth (which can be traced
back to Gauóapāda and then probably to Buddhist Mahāyāna philosophers). In par-
ticular, Śaïkara used this theory for his Advaitic reinterpretation of the Gītā, which
interpretation then legitimized this text in the dominant Hindu tradition (Vedānta),
and probably saved it for posterity.53 In a more general sense, this theory provided
not only the Advaitins, but also their opponents with an opportunity to view their
own system as the expression of the highest truth and to treat other doctrines not as
mere lies, but as lower, conditioned knowledge. Thus, the concept softened the
contradictions between competing schools and saved the integrity of Hinduism.
———————
52
See, e.g., in the modern period a striking testimony of Śrī Rāmakçùõa who, during the
first meeting with his future disciple, Mahendranath Gupta, asked him: ‘... Do you be-
lieve in God with form or without form?’ The answer was: ‘Sir, I like to think of God as
formless.’ ‘Very good.’ – said Rāmakçùõa – ‘It is enough to have faith in either aspect.
You believe in God without form; that is quite all right. But never for a moment think
that this alone is true and all else false. Remember that God with form is as true as God
without form. But hold fast to your own conviction.’ (Gupta 1994: 80.) This testimony
is particularly valuable because Śrī Rāmakçùõa himself, as was witnessed by his con-
temporaries, had achieved the ultimate goal by various yogic paths. The advanced
yogins and mystics of other religions were aware of the fact that the altered states of
consciousness where the seemingly opposite, e.g. theistic and non-theistic, visions of the
divine can be obtained, are situated on the ‘map’ of the human unconscious in close
proximity to each other. This can be illustrated by an example from the Christian tradi-
tion. Ignatius Loyola kept records of his experience in meditative states; when his work
on the meditation manual for Jesuit monks was finished, he burned the records in the
stove. One notebook by chance escaped burning. It testifies that Loyola, in a meditative
state, sometimes had the vision of God as the formless l’Essence divine, or the divine
Void. This frightened him, and he hastened to move on to the contemplation of familiar
images (the persons of the Holy Trinity). See: Eisenstein 1964: 205-207.
53
It is noteworthy that in his introduction to the Bhāùya (Upodghāta 4) Śaïkara, in order
to prove that the Gītā, like Advaita, has the impersonal Brahman for its highest goal and
preaches a total renunciation of all works, refers to the ‘sense of the Gītā’ as formulated
by Kçùõa himself, quoting however not the BhG, but the Sāükhyayic Anugītā (MBh
14,16.11, 19.1, 19.7, 43.24).
32 YAROSLAV VASSILKOV

As soon as the independent Sāükhya emerged out of the Sāükhyayoga complex,

the significance of the yogic constituent in it began to diminish. In the epic Sāükhya
texts we can still find some descriptions of the yogic practice aimed mostly at ex-
tracting the mind from its involvement with sense stimuli; and this lingering con-
nection was probably responsible for the mutual influence, an exchange of ideas and
compromises between Sāükhya and Yoga (as a trend of thought) during several cen-
turies. But towards the classical period the last links with the yoga practice had been
broken. For the adepts of Sāükhya liberation had become a purely intellectual act. In
contrast with the epic period, when yogins, according to the BhG and the Mokùa-
dharma, regarded the Sāükhya way as valid and reaching the highest goal, the
yogins of the classical period categorically denied the effectiveness and adequate-
ness of the Sāükhya method (Feuerstein 1980: 117-119). The loss of the yogic con-
stituent made it impossible for Sāükhyaics to verify their speculations by the yogic
experience, and this had inevitably to discredit their system in the eyes of the other
Hindu philosophers. I would even risk a suggestion that, contrary to the opinion of
some scholars, referred to above, it was not the loss of the īśvara idea, but the loss of
a yogic connection that was the main reason why the Sāükhya eventually ‘failed to
endure the tests of time’ (Fowler 2002: 196).

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 The Gītā versus the Anugītā 35

[[The following entries were not referred to in the text – shall I omit them?:
DEUSSEN, Paul & Otto STRAUSS (trans.) 1906. Vier philosophische Texte des Mahâbhâratam:
Sanatsujâta-parvan – Bhagavadgîtâ – Mokshadharma – Anugîtâ. Leipzig: F. A.
Brockhaus.
RUKMANI, T. S. 1999S. Sāükhya and Yoga: Where they do not speak in one voice. AS/ÉA
53.3: 733-751.]]

[[The following entries have been omitted from the bibliography, because they
will belong to the “Frequently-cited works” listed in the beginning of the
volume:

BROCKINGTON, John 1998. The Sanskrit Epics. (Handbuch der Orientalistik, II.12.) Leiden:
Brill.]]

[[And some minor notes/questions:

Footnote 2 (p. 3): The reference “Vassilkov 2001a: 26-27” – You had 2002; was my
correction right?

Bibliography:
– Humboldt 1826: I hope the reference I added is correct
– Modi 1932: I hope the reference I added is correct + if you know the publisher, please add it
(somehow even the EPB did not have it)
– Szczurek 2005: I’ll add the page nos. when the layout is final]]