Author: Purushottam Lal
Publisher: Roli Books
Year: 2005
Language: multilingual
Pages: 191
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8174363246
Description
Because Arjuna refuses to act, the epic story of the Mahabharata slides to a standstill. Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita provides the kickstart by stressing the imperative need to act. Arjuna, stricken by paralyzing sorrow, swirling in indecision’s quicksand, throws away his bow and quiver, and slumps down on his war-chariot. And thus starts the Bhagavad Gita.
EDITOR'S NOTE:
In a short preface to the first edition of my English version of the Bhagavad Gita (published by Writers Workshop in 1965), I wrote:
I first translated the Gita in 1947, in rhymed English verse. It was an adolescent experiment and, though a couplet or two may not have sounded too bad, the iambs and anapaests in general appeared to be contrived, precious, and terribly archaic.
Another attempt in prose, five years later, became too flat. The original has the dignity and memorability of a chanted poem. Prose is too thin a medium for it.
The essential structure of the Gita, however, is question-and-answer. Arjuna questions; Krishna answers. The tone is lofty, but intimate, highly serious, but friendly, sacred, but colloquially so. The present translation tries to preserve the dialogue spirit of the Sanskrit, a spirit marked by simplicity, grace, brevity, and clarity.
Readers who discover in my version a certain dramatic quality will be right in inferring that I see the sacred text of Hinduism as an integral part of Vyasa's epic of India.
Contents
INTRODUCTION
Arjuna’s Grief
The Path of Yoga
The Yoga of Action
The Yoga of Action and Renunciation
The Yoga of Renunciation
The Yoga of Meditation
The Yoga of Knowledge
The Nature of Brahman
The Secret of Work
The Universal Glory
The Cosmic Multi-Revelation
The Way of Devotion
The Field and the knower of the field
The Different Gunas
The Highest Purusha
Divine and Anti-Divine Natures
The Three Devotions
The Way of Salvation