Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 India, the Bhagavad Gita and the World
- 2 The Transnational Gita
- 3 The Transfiguration of Duty in Aurobindo's Essays on the Gita
- 4 Gandhi's Gita and Politics as Such
- 5 Gandhi on Democracy, Politics and the Ethics of Everyday Life
- 6 Morality in the Shadow of Politics
- 7 Ambedkar's Inheritances
- 8 Rethinking Knowledge with Action: V. D. Savarkar, the Bhagavad Gita and Histories of Warfare
- 9 A History of Violence
- Index
2 - The Transnational Gita
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 India, the Bhagavad Gita and the World
- 2 The Transnational Gita
- 3 The Transfiguration of Duty in Aurobindo's Essays on the Gita
- 4 Gandhi's Gita and Politics as Such
- 5 Gandhi on Democracy, Politics and the Ethics of Everyday Life
- 6 Morality in the Shadow of Politics
- 7 Ambedkar's Inheritances
- 8 Rethinking Knowledge with Action: V. D. Savarkar, the Bhagavad Gita and Histories of Warfare
- 9 A History of Violence
- Index
Summary
The Gita lends itself easily to interpretation. The tractability of the Gita has vital roots in ambiguities inherent to its structure and its place within the Mahabharata epic: the heterogeneity of its narrative material suggests that rather than being a unified composition, the Gita may be a combination of older sections with later interpolations, and, moreover, may itself be a late insertion into the fabric of the Mahabharata. The Gita's adaptability to different kinds of philosophical interpretation is fundamentally shaped by the fact that its composer(s) reconciled within it several philosophical darśanas, including fundamental concepts from Saṅkhya and Yoga, with newer devotional aspects associated with the rise of Bhakti traditions. Within the Brahmanical tradition the text further possesses a certain ambiguity of status: despite being of smarta rather than śrauta origin, the Gita was given a special position, and treated as distinct from most other smrti literature by commentators as early as Śaṅkara in the ninth century. This quality of being assigned semi-doctrinal status while being neither scripture nor revealed religion has, as shall be seen below, persistent echoes in the Gita's reception in the modern period.
This essay traces the metamorphosis of the Gita from a text of contained circulation within an enclaved Brahmanical tradition in India, through a period in which it was the subject of circumspect curiosity and limited interest, into a text of transnational significance.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Political Thought in ActionThe Bhagavad Gita and Modern India, pp. 25 - 47Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2013