CHAPTER 1
The Bhagavad Gita in the Time of Its Composition
1. Among several accessible retellings of the Mahābhārata, the most reliable is C. V. Narasimhan, The Mahābhārata (New York: Columbia University Press, 1973). Somewhere between retelling and translation is the highly abridged but useful eight-hundred-page Mahābhārata by John D. Smith, The Mahābhārata: An Abridged Translation(London: Penguin Books, 2009). For a partial full translation, see the ongoing University of Chicago Press project, translations by J.A.B. Van Buitenen and James Fitzgerald, The Mahābhārata, 4 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973–2004). Finally, a full translation was completed in the 1890s by Kisari Mohan Ganguly, and is available in a reprint edition: Kisan Mohan Ganguly, Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, 4 vols. (Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 2004).
2. All quotations from the Bhagavad Gītā cited parenthetically in the text will hereafter refer to chapter and verse numbers only.
3. On Vyasa, see Bruce M. Sullivan, Seer of the Fifth Veda: Kṛṣṇa Dvaipāyana Vyāsa in the Mahābhārata (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1999); Alf Hiltebeitel, Rethinking the Mahābhārata: A Reader’s Guide to the Education of the Dharma King (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001).
4. For notable recent scholarship concerning the composition and date of the Mahābhārata, see J.A.B. Van Buitenen, The Mahābhārata, vol. 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973); Madeleine Biardeau, Le Mahābhārata: un récit fondateur du brahmanisme et son interprétation, 2 vols. (Paris: Seuil, 2002); Hiltebeitel, Rethinking the Mahābhārata; James L. Fitzgerald, The Mahābhārata, vol. 7 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004); Angelika Malinar, The Bhagavadgītā: Doctrines and Contexts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
5. On the monumental project of critically editing the Mahābhārata, see the collected essays of the first project director, Vishnu Shankar Sukthankar, Critical Studies in the Mahābhārata (Poona: V. S. Sukthankar Memorial Committee, 1944). For a brief postcolonial take on the project, see Peter van der Veer, Imperial Encounters: Religion and Modernity in India and Britain (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 116–22.
6. J.A.B. Van Buitenen, The Bhagavad Gītā in the Mahābhārata (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 5–6. See also Franklin Edgerton, The Bhagavad Gītā (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1944).
CHAPTER 2
Krishna and His Gita in Medieval India
1. I am grateful to Jack Hawley for extensive comments on an earlier draft of this chapter.
2. Mahābhārata, Sabhāparvan, chaps. 34–42. See J.A.B. Van Buitenen, Mahābhārata (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), 2:93–106.
3. For accessible translations of the Krishna portions of the HarivaṂśa and Bhāgavata Purṇa, see Francis G. Hutchins, Young Krishna (West Franklin, NH: Amarta Press, 1980); Edwin F. Bryant, Krishna: The Beautiful Legend of God (London: Penguin Books, 2003).
4. Friedhelm Hardy, Viraha-Bhakti: The Early History of Kṛṣṇa Devotion in South India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983).
5. John S. Hawley, “Krishna’s Cosmic Victories,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 47 (1979): 201–21.
6. For general treatments of this genre, see Umesh Chandra Bhattacharjee, “The Gītā Literature and Its Relation with Brahma-Vidyā,” Indian Historical Quarterly 2 (1926): 537–46, 761–71; R. Nilakantan, Gītās in the Mahābhārata and the Purān.as (Delhi: Nag Publishers, 1989). For translated examples of other gods’ gītās, see Greg Bailey,Gan.eśapurān.a (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, 1995); C. Mackenzie Brown, The Devī Gītā: The Song of the Goddess (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1998); Steven J. Rosen, Krishna’s Other Song: A New Look at the Uddhava Gita (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2010); Andrew J. Nicholson, Lord Śiva’s Song: The Īśvara Gītā (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2014).
7. Bhagavadgītā with Śānokarabhāṣya (Delhi: Motilal Banasidass, 1988), 1–2. For a full English translation, see A. Mahadeva Sastri, The Bhagavad Gītā with the Commentary of Śrī Śankarāchārya (Mysore: G.T.A. Printing Works, 1901).
8. Winand Callewaert and Shilanand Hemraj, Bhagavadgītānuvāda: A Study in Transcultural Translation (Ranchi: Satya Bharati Publications, 1982), 98–110. For sixty-four Sanskrit commentaries, see also the index in Karl H. Potter, Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies: Bibliography (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983), 946–47.
9. For a general introduction to the Vedanta schools, see R. N. Dandekar, “Vedanta,” in The Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. Mircea Eliade (New York: Macmillan, 1987), 16:207–14. For a valuable summary of several Vedanta commentaries on the Gītā, see Arvind Sharma, The Hindu Gītā: Ancient and Classical Interpretations of the Bhagavadgītā (LaSalle, IL: Open Court Publishing, 1986). For a fuller treatment, see T. G. Mainkar, A Comparative Study of the Commentaries on the Bhagavadgītā (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1969).
10. Gary A. Tubb and Emery R. Boose, Scholastic Sanskrit: A Handbook for Students (New York: American Institute of Buddhist Studies at Columbia University, 2007), 1.
11. A. Govindacharya, Sri Bhagavad-gītā with Sri Rāmānujāchārya’s Viṣisthādvaita Commentary (Madras: Vaijayanti Press, 1898); J.A.B. Van Buitenen, Rāmānuja on the Bhagavadgītā: A Condensed Rendering of His Gītābhāṣya with Copious Notes and an Introduction (The Hague: Ned Bock en Steendrukkerji, 1958). For an excellent overview of Rāmānuja’s viewpoint, see John Braisted Carman, The Theology of Rāmānuja: An Essay in Interreligious Understanding (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1974).
12. Van Buitenen, Rāmānuja on the Bhagavadgītā, 45–47.
13. Sheldon I. Pollock, The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006).
14. All quotations from Swami Kripananda, Jnaneshwar’s Gita: A Rendering of the Jnaneshwari (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1989); it is based on the translation by V. G. Pradhan, Jnāneshvari: Bhavārthadipikā, Written by Shri Jnāneshvar (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1987). I am grateful to Christian Novetzke and Jon Keune for valuable comments on a longer draft chapter on Jñānadeva and his work.
CHAPTER 3
Passages from India
1. Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (New York: Viking Press, 1959). “Passage to India” was first added to the fifth edition (1871) of Leaves of Grass as an appendix.
2. George Hendrick, “Whitman’s Copy of the Bhagavad-Gita,” Walt Whitman Review 5 (1959): 12–14.
3. On Wilkins’s career, see Mary Lloyd, “Sir Charles Wilkins, 1749–1836), India Office Library and Records Report (1978): 9–39. For his contributions to Sanskrit studies, see E. H. Johnston, “Charles Wilkins,” in Woolner Commemoration Volume, ed. M. Shafi (Lahore: Meherchand Lachman Das, 1940). See also Richard H. Davis, “Wilkins, Kasinatha, Hastings, and the First English Gita,” special issue honoring Edwin Gerow, International Journal of Hindu Studies (forthcoming). I am grateful to Brian Hatcher and Rosane Rocher for their valuable comments on a longer essay on Wilkins and Kashinatha.
4. Charles Wilkins, A Grammar of the Sanskrita Language (London: C. Nourse, 1808), xi. On Halhed’s oriental career, see Rosane Rocher, Orientalism, Poetry, and the Millennium: The Checkered Life of Nathaniel Brassey Halhed, 1751–1830 (Delhi: Motilal Banaridass, 1983).
5. Charles Wilkins, “A Catalogue of Sanscita Manuscripts Presented to the Royal Society by Sir William and Lady Jones (1798),” in vol. 13, The Works of Sir William Jones (Delhi: Agam Prakashan, 1980).
6. Charles Wilkins, The Bhagavat-Gēētā, or Dialogues of Kreeshna and Arjoon, in Eighteen Lectures; with Notes (London: C. Nourse, 1785), 24–25.
7. Ibid., 24.
8. P. J. Marshall, The British Discovery of Hinduism in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1970), 12.
9. Sydney G. Grier, The Letters of Warren Hastings to His Wife (Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, 1905), 364–65.
10. Warren Hastings, “To Nathaniel Smith, Esquire,” in The Bhagavat-Gēētā, or Dialogues of Kreeshna and Arjoon, ed. Charles Wilkins (London: C. Nourse, 1785), 10.
11. For the broadest account of the European response to works of Indian antiquity during this period, see Raymond Schwab, The Oriental Renaissance: Europe’s Rediscovery of India and the East, 1680–1880 (New York: Columbia University Press). On the response in German, see A. Leslie Willson, A Mythical Image: The Ideal of India in German Romanticism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1964); Wilhelm Halbfass, India and Europe: An Essay in Understanding (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1988); Bradley L. Herling, The German Gita: Hermeneutics and Discipline in the German Reception of Indian Thought, 1778–1831 (New York: Routledge, 2006); Vishwa Adluri and Jagdeep Bagchee, The Nay Science: A History of German Indology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). For a work tracing the Gītā in the poetry of the English Romantics, see K. G. Srivastava, Bhagavad-Gītā and the English Romantic Movement (Delhi: Macmillan India Ltd., 2002).
12. Quoted in Schwab, Oriental Renaissance, 71.
13. Quoted in ibid., 161.
14. Rosane Rocher, Alexander Hamilton (1762–1824): A Chapter in the Early History of Sanskrit Philology (New Haven, CT: American Oriental Society, 1968).
15. Friedrich von Schlegel, The Aesthetic and Miscellaneous Works of Friedrich von Schlegel, trans. E. J. Millington (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1849), 427.
16. Henry David Thoreau, Walden, or, Life in the Woods (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992). On Thoreau and the Gita, see Robert D. Richardson Jr., Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986); Paul Friedrich, The Gita within Walden (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2006); Barbara Stoller Miller, “Afterword: Why Did Henry David Thoreau Take theBhagavad-Gita to Walden Pond,” in The Bhagavad-gita: Krishna’s Counsel in Time of War, trans. Barbara Stoller Miller (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986).
17. For an example of missionary Gītā reading, see J. N. Farquhar, Gītā and Gospel (Madras: Christian Literature Society, 1917); it portrays the Gītā as “the cry of the Hindu people for an incarnate Saviour” (32). For more recent Christian reflections on the Gītā, see Catherine Cornille, ed., Song Divine: Christian Commentaries on the Bhagavad Gītā (Leuven: Peeters, 2006).
18. Quoted in Wilkins, Bhagavat Gēētā, 13. On Hastings’s role in promoting early Indological knowledge, see P. J. Marshall, “Warren Hastings as Scholar and Patron,” in Statesmen, Scholars, and Merchants: Essays in Eighteenth Century History Presented to Dame Lucy Sutherland, ed. Anne Bramley J. S. Whiteman and P.G.M. Dickenson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), 342–62.
19. James Mill, The History of British India (London: Baldwin, Cradock and Joy, 1826). On Mill and Grant as examples of “Indophobia,” see Thomas R. Trautmann, Aryans and British India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).
20. Terence Ball, “James Mill,” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H.C.G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 38:150.
21. Mill, History of British India, 329–30.
22. Ibid., 283.
23. Herling, The German Gita, 168.
24. Herbert Herring, introduction to On the Episode of the Mahābhārata Known by the Name Bhagavad-Gītā by Wilhelm von Humboldt, by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (New Delhi: Indian Council of Philosophical Research, 1995), xiv–xv.
25. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, On the Episode of the Mahābhārata Known by the Name Bhagavad-Gītā by Wilhelm von Humboldt, trans. Herbert Herring (New Delhi: Indian Council of Philosophical Research, 1995).
26. Richard Hughes Seager, The World’s Parliament of Religions: The East/West Encounter, Chicago, 1893 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995).
27. Marie Louise Burke, Swami Vivekananda in America: New Discoveries (Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1958). For general biographies of Vivekananda, see Eastern and Western Disciples, The Life of Swami Vivekananda, 3rd ed. (1912; repr., Mayavati, Himalayas: Advaita Ashrama, 1944); Christopher Isherwood, Ramakrishna and His Disciples (London: Metheuen and Co., 1965). I am grateful to Gordon Stavig (Gopal) for his comments on this section.
28. Disciples, Life of Swami Vivekananda, 363.
29. This is Vivekananda’s rendering of Bhagavad Gītā 4.11. For his addresses at the parliament, see Swami Vivekananda, The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, 8 vols. (Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1970–73), 1:3–24. On Vivekananda and the Gītā, see Harold W. French, “Swami Vivekananda’s Use of the Bhagavadgita,” in Modern Indian Interpreters of the Bhagavadgita, ed. R. N. Minor (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1986), 131–46.
30. Swami Nikhilananda, Vivekananda: A Biography (New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1953), 60.
31. Carl T. Jackson, Vedanta for the West: The Ramakrishna Movement in the United States (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994).
32. Vivekananda, “Madras Lecture,” in Complete Works, 3:242.
33. Nikhilananda, Vivekananda: A Biography, 69.
CHAPTER 4
Krishna, the Gita, and the Indian Nation
1. Swami Shraddhananda, Hindu Sangathan: Saviour of the Dying Race (Delhi: Arjun Press, 1926), 130–41. On Shraddhananda’s career, see J.T.F. Jordens, Swami Shraddhananda: His Life and Causes (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1981). I thank Jyotindra Jain for bringing this work to my attention. I also thank Philip Oldenberg and Sanjib Baruah for useful comments on an earlier draft of this chapter.
2. The most prominent examples are the Gita Mandirs in both Kurukshetra and Mathura and the Gita Bhavan in Delhi, constructed in the 1930s and 1940s by the industrialist Birla family, strong supporters of Gandhi and also Hindu nationalist leaders like Madan Mohan Malaviya.
3. Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, Krishna-Charitra, trans. Pradip Bhattacharya (Calcutta: M. P. Birla Foundation, 1991), 21.
4. James Mill, The History of British India (London: Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy, 1826), 1:144.
5. Monier Monier-Williams, Brahmanism and Hinduism; or, Religious Thought and Life in India, 4th ed. (New York: Macmillan and Co., 1891), 136.
6. Lala Lajpat Rai, “Great Men of the World: V. Shri Krishna,” in The Collected Works of Lala Lajpat Rai, ed. B. R. Nanda (Delhi: Manohar Publishers, 2003), 1:434.
7. Ibid., 1:430.
8. Ibid., 1:434.
9. Ibid., 1:435.
10. Lala Lajpat Rai, “Message of the Bhagwad-Gita,” in The Collected Works of Lala Lajpat Rai, ed. B. R. Nanda (Delhi: Manohar Publishers, 2003), 3:329–53. On karma yoga and Indian nationalism, see Ursula King, “Who Is the Ideal Karmayogin? The Meaning of a Hindu Religious Symbol,” Religion 10 (1980): 41–45; Dilip Bose, “Bhagavad-Gita and Our National Movement,” in Marxism and the Bhagvat Geeta (New Delhi: People’s Publishing House, 1982); V. Subrahmaniam, “Karmayoga and the Rise of the Indian Middle Class,” Journal of Arts and Ideas 14–15 (1987): 133–42. See also the recent work of K. Nagappa Gowda, The Bhagavadgita in the Nationalist Discourse (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2011).
11. Lajpat Rai, “Message of the Bhagwad Gita,” 353.
12. Uma Mukherjee, Two Great Indian Revolutionaries: Rosh Behari Bose and Jyotindra Nath Mukherjee (Calcutta: Firma K. L. Mukhopadhyay, 1966), 17. For secondary accounts of the Anushilan Samiti, see R. C. Majumdar, History of the Freedom Movement in India, 3 vols. (Calcutta: Firma K. L. Mukhopadhyay, 1963), 2:265–327; Leonard A. Gordon, Bengal: The Nationalist Movement, 1876–1940 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974), 135–60.
13. James Campbell Ker, Political Trouble in India, 1907–1917 (Delhi: Oriental Publishers, 1973), 50. A senior officer working as a personal assistant to the director of criminal intelligence, Ker compiled all available information in this 1917 confidential report on the various Indian revolutionary groups active in the first two decades of the twentieth century.
14. For excellent biographies detailing the career of Aurobindo Ghose, see Peter Heehs, Sri Aurobindo: A Brief Biography (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989); and Peter Heehs, The Lives of Sri Aurobindo (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008). For Aurobindo’s early political writings, see Aurobindo Ghose, Bande Mataram: Early Political Writings—1 (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, 1972); Aurobindo Ghose, Karmayogin: Early Political Writings—2 (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, 1972).
15. Aurobindo Ghose, “Bombay Speech,” quoted in Heehs, Sri Aurobindo, 91.
16. For a full historical study of this key Indian nation-deity, see Sumathi Ramaswamy, The Goddess and the Nation: Mapping Mother India (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010).
17. Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Śrīmad Bhagavadgītā-rahasya, or Karma-yoga-śāstra, trans. B. S. Sukthankar (Poona: Tilak Brothers, 1935). On Tilak’s interpretation of the Gītā, see D. Mackenzie Brown, “The Philosophy of Bal Gangadhar Tilak: Karma vs. Jñāna in the Gītā Rahasya,” Journal of Asian Studies 17 (1957–58): 197–206.
18. For a good overview of Hedgwar’s career and primary works, see G. S. Hingle, Hindutva Reawakened (New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1999). On the RSS, see Walter K. Andersen and Shridhar D. Damle, The Brotherhood in Saffron: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Hindu Revivialism (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1987). For a broader history of Hindu nationalism, see Christophe Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement in India (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996).
19. Nagappa Gowda, Bhagavadgita in the Nationalist Discourse, 222–35.
20. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth, trans. Mahadev Desai (Washington, DC: Public Affairs Press, 1948), 69. For the most useful among the innumerable writings on Gandhi, see Margaret Chatterjee, Gandhi’s Religious Thought (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983); Dennis Dalton, Mahatma Gandhi: Nonviolent Power in Action (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993); Bradley S. Clough, “Gandhi, Nonviolence, and the Bhagavad-Gita,” in Holy War: Violence and the Bhagavad Gita, ed. Steven J. Rosen (Hampton, VA: Deepak Heritage Books, 2002). For a remarkable compilation of Gandhi’s myriad comments on the Gita, see Y. P. Anand, Mahatma Gandhi’s ‘Works’ and Interpretations of the Bhagavad Gita, 2 vols. (New Delhi: Radha Publications, 2009).
21. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Bhagavad Gita according to Gandhi (Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 2000), xvi–xvii.
22. Ibid., xviii.
23. Ibid., 155.
24. Ibid., xx.
25. Ibid., 58.
26. Ibid., 24.
27. Ibid., 205.
28. On popular notions of Gandhi as an incarnation, see Shahid Amin, “Gandhi as Mahatma: Gorakhpur District, Eastern U.P., 1921–22,” Subaltern Studies 3 (1984): 1–61.
29. Tapan Ghosh, The Gandhi Murder Trial (New York: Asia Publishing House, 1973), 29.
30. Ghosh, Gandhi Murder Trial, 303. On Godse’s convictions, see also his lengthy trial statement, in Nathuram Vinayak Godse, May It Please Your Honour: Statement of Nathuram Godse (Pune: Vitasta Prakashan, 1977). I thank my Bard colleague Sanjib Baruah for urging me to look into Godse and the Gītā.
31. Aurobindo Ghose, “Uttarpara Speech,” in Karmayogin: Early Political Writings—2 (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, 1972), 3.
32. Ibid., 4.
33. Ibid., 5.
34. Ibid., 9.
35. Aurobindo Ghose, “On Himself,” 37, 34, quoted in Heehs, Sri Aurobindo, 70.
36. Aurobindo Ghose, Essays on the Gita (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, 1995), 4.
37. Ibid., 8.
38. Ibid., 10–11.
CHAPTER 5
Modern Gitas: Translations
1. Discourse by Jayadayal Goyandka, recorded in Paul Arney, “The Mouth of Sanatana Dharma: The Role of Gita Press in Spreading the Word” (paper presented at the American Academy of Religion conference, Baltimore, November 23–26, 1993). I thank Jack Hawley for sharing a copy of this essay with me. I am grateful to Steven Lindquist for his careful reading of this chapter.
2. Winand Callewaert and Shilanand Hemraj, Bhagavadgītānuvāda: A Study in Transcultural Translation (Ranchi: Satya Bharati Publications, 1982). For another useful bibliographic study, see Jagdish Chander Kapoor, Bhagavad-Gītā: An International Bibliography of 1785–1979 Imprints (New York: Garland Publishing, 1983).
3. Gerald James Larson, “The Song Celestial: Two Centuries of the Bhagavad Gītā in English,” Philosophy East and West 31, no. 4 (1981): 513–41.
4. Gerald Genette, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, trans. Jane E. Lewin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).
5. J.A.B. Van Buitenen, preface to The Bhagavadgītā in the Mahābhārata (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), xi.
6. Van Buitenen, Bhagavadgītā in the Mahābhārata, 5.
7. Ibid., xii.
8. Stephen Mitchell, Bhagavad Gita: A New Translation (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2000), 23. Copyright © 2000 by Stephen Mitchell. Used by permission of Harmony Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
9. Ibid., 32.
10. Isherwood records his efforts to find a suitable translational style in his “Journals of 1942–1943,” retold in Christopher Isherwood, My Guru and His Disciple (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001, 147–53).
11. Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1945).
12. Nicholas Murray, Aldous Huxley: An English Intellectual (London: Little, Brown, 2002), 354.
13. For informative essays on Prabhupada and the founding of ISKCON, see Graham Dwyer and Richard Cole, The Hare Krishna Movement: Forty Years of Chant and Change (London: I. B. Tauris, 2007); Steven J. Rosen, Gaudiya Vaishnavism and ISKCON: An Anthology of Scholarly Perspectives (Vrindaban: Rasbihari Lal and Sons, 2008). On the publication of Bhagavad-gītā As It Is, see Satyaraja Dasa (Steven Rosen), “The Macmillan Miracle,” Back to Godhead (2008): 24–28.
14. A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, Bhagavad-gītā As It Is (Los Angeles: Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, 1989), xxix.
15. I am grateful to Steven Rosen and Joshua Greene for their advice on this section.
16. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, preface to The Bhagavadgītā (New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1948), 5. On Radhakrishnan and the Gītā, see Robert N. Minor, “The Bhagavadgita in Radhakrishnan’s Apologetics,” in Modern Indian Interpreters of the Bhagavadgita, ed. Robert N. Minor (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1986), 147–72.
17. Radhakrishnan, Bhagavadgītā, 75.
18. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, “The Religion of the Spirit and the World’s Need: Fragments of a Confession,” in The Philosophy of Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, ed. Paul Arthur Schipp (New York: Tudor Publishing Company, 1952), 7.
19. These are Oppenheimer’s own translations of 11.12 and 11.32. Oppenheimer recalled this in a 1954 NBC interview, “The Decision to Drop the Bomb,” and in other sources. For a full study of Oppenheimer’s engagement with the Bhagavad Gītā, see James A. Hijaya, “The Gita of J. Robert Oppenheimer,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 144, no. 2 (2000): 13–32.
20. Buitenen, Bhagavadgītā in the Mahābhārata, 117.
21. Mitchell, Bhagavad Gita, 138.
22. Prabhupada, Bhagavad-gītā As It Is, 399–400.
23. Radhakrishnan, Bhagavadgītā, 279–80.
CHAPTER 6
The Gita in Our Time: Performances
1. There is no scholarship known to me on oral performances of the Bhagavad Gītā. For the best single work on oral performance of Indian religious works, see Philip Lutgendorf, The Life of a Text: Performing the Rāmcaritmānas of Tulsidas (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991). For another valuable work on devotional performative traditions, see Christian Novetzke, Religion and Public Memory: A Cultural History of Sant Namdev in India (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008).
2. I am grateful to Shekhar Bajaj, Bharat Mahodaya, and Ashok Mehre for facilitating my visit to Wardha. I also thank Gautam Bajaj and Usha Behn at Paunar Ashram.
3. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, “Prayer,” in Ashram Observances in Action (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 2006), 7–18.
4. The set of prayers are made available in a pamphlet on sale for five rupees at the ashram bookstall: S. P. Pande, Ashram Prayers (Sevagram, Maharashtra: Sevagram Ashram Pratishthan, 2006).
5. For his interpretation of the Gītā, as a collection of his talks given to fellow inmates while incarcerated in Dhule jail in 1932, see Vinoba Bhave, Talks on the Gita, 20th ed. (Paunar, Wardha: Paramdham Prakasham, 2011).
6. Subhash Gethe has published two works on Jñānadeva in English: Pasāyadāna: The Universal Prayer of Santa Jñāneśvara Mahārāja (Alandi: Vedanta Swadhyaya Pratishtan, 2007); Haripāt≥ha of Sant Jnanaeshvara Maharaja (Alandi: Vedanta Swadhyaya, 2008). I thank Subhash Gethe for correcting a few errors in an earlier draft of this section.
7. Vishnupant Govind Damle and Sheikh Fattelal, Sant Dnyaneshwar (India, 1940). As Christian Novetzke comments, the film depicts Jñānadeva’s bhakti as “an activity performed before people, which is in turn projected on a screen and performed for a film-viewing audience.” Christian Lee Novetzke, Religion and Public Memory: A Cultural History of Sant Namdev in India (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 15.
8. Kripananda, Jnaneshwar’s Gita, 111.
9. A. Parthasarathy, Śrīmad Bhagavad Gītā, 3 vols. (Bombay: Vakil and Sons Ltd., 1994).
10. Swami Tathagatananda, interview, New York, April 27, 2012.
11. I thank R. S. Rana for his hospitality at the Sri Krishna Museum and help in answering my questions in an earlier draft of this chapter.
12. Elattuvalapil Sreedharan, personal interview, New Delhi, December 2011. See Swami Vidyaprakashananda, Gita Makaranda, 7th ed. (Kalahasti, Andhra Pradesh: Sri Suka Brahma Ashram, 2007).
13. I am grateful to Anil Sutar for responding to my questions concerning the Shri Krishan Arjun Rath.
EPILOGUE
THE BHAGAVAD GITA IN GREAT TIME
1. Mikhail Bakhtin, “Response to a Question from the Novy Mir Editorial Staff,” in Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, trans. Vern W. McGee, ed. Carly Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986), 4.
2. Mikhail Bakhtin, “Toward a Methodology for the Human Sciences,” quoted in Katarina Clark and Michael Holquist, Mikhail Bakhtin (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 348–50.