In Our Time - The Bhagavad Gita

Episode Date: March 31, 2011

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Bhagavad Gita.The Bhagavad Gita, a 700-verse section of the Sanskrit epic the Mahabharata, is one of the most revered texts of Hinduism. Written in around 200 BC, it narrates a conversation between Krishna, an incarnation of the deity, and the Pandava prince Arjuna. It has been described as a concise summary of Hindu theology, a short work which offers advice on how to live one's life.The Gita is also a philosophical work of great richness and influence. First translated into English in the 18th century, it was quickly taken up in the West. Its many admirers have included Mahatma Gandhi, whose passion for the work is one reason that the Bhagavad Gita became a key text for followers of the Indian Independence movement in the first half of the twentieth century.With:Chakravarthi Ram-PrasadProfessor of Comparative Religion and Philosophy at Lancaster UniversityJulius LipnerProfessor of Hinduism and the Comparative Study of Religion and Fellow of Clare Hall at the University of CambridgeJessica FrazierResearch Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies and Lecturer in Religious Studies at Regent's College, LondonProducer: Thomas Morris.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk forward slash radio 4. I hope you enjoy the programme. Hello, one of the defining moments in the life of Mahatma Gandhi took place in London in the late 1880s when the future leader of the Indian independence movement

was a law student at UCL. Friends introduced him to an ancient Hindu text, its effect on him was electric. The Gita is the universal mother, he wrote 30 years later. When disappointment stares me in the face, and all alone I see not one ray of light, I go back to the Bugwad Gita. I find a verse here and a verse there, and I immediately begin to smile in the midst of overwhelming tragedies.

The Bugvad Gita is perhaps the most important scripture of Hinduism, but it's also a hugely influential philosophical and spiritual text, which remains widely read today, 2,000 years after its word. was written. With me to discuss the Bhaghata are Chakravati Ram Prasad, Professor of Comparative Religion and Philosophy at Lancaster University. Julius Lipner, Professor of Hinduism and the Comparative Study of Religion and Fellow of Claire Hall at the University of Cambridge,

and Jessica Fraser, Research Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies and Lecturer in Religious Studies at Regents College London. Ram Prasad, the Bhagavad Gita is part of a longer work called the Mahabharam. Could you explain what that book is and where that comes from, the Mahabarata first? The Mahabharata is in many ways a compendium of narratives that were written or composed somewhere between about the third or fourth century BC and the third or fourth century of the common era. And one of the oft-quoted figures about it is it's three times as long as the Iliad. So it's always a little difficult to sum it up.

However, the core story concerns a struggle for power between two sets of brothers who are themselves cousins. The ethical complexity of the contest between them comes from the fact that one group of brothers, the Pandavas, over five, could have inherited the kingdom from their father, but he had to give it up in very particular circumstances. So the kingdom passed to his younger brother, whose sons are the other set of brothers, the 100 Kauravas. And the problem comes from the fact that there are reasons why both of these groups of brothers can claim the throne. On the one hand, there is an ethical concern that the kingdom should pass on to those who are entitled to do so. And on the other hand, you have real political considerations that those who are in power should not have the stability of their rule challenged. So the Mahabharata itself leads up inexorably to a battle between these two sides.

The story in it which has retained the moral and religious connection to Hindus since then, comes through the presence of an enigmatic figure in it called Krishna. Now, Krishna is cousin to both these sets of cousins. And in himself, he is the ruler of a minor principality, although known as a great warrior. But the real story for most Hindus is across the length of the Mahabharata, especially in its later parts, he is gradually revealed as God.

Now, he plays a crucial role in this, on the one hand, his armies fight for the Kauravas. And on the other hand, in order to be equal to neutral to the two sides, he offers himself in a non-combatant role, and the Pandavas accept him as such. So the Bhagavad Gita happens just on the eve of this battle between the two sides, in which all the kingdom and all the rulers of ancient India are ranged on either side. So as I understand it, there's been this massive build-up of this great battle of five brothers against five brothers and these two families are related,

and each thinks they have a claim to power and the throne. And just before the battle, the Gita was perhaps inserted this section or came later, wherever it is. And can you just tell us what that out, briefly, what that does, that insert? Right. Well, again, that is. is a matter of great scholarly dispute. The tradition itself has always thought that the Gita was integral, and some scholars have made that point. In any case, it plays this crucial role.

On the battlefield, the most important of the warriors of the side of the Pandavas, Arjuna, looks to the other side, and there he sees his teachers, his elders, his great-uncle, people who he respects greatly, arranged against him. Now, they have chosen to do this because they think that they have to serve the ruler

who is on the throne at that time. So although they really support the Pandavas, they feel that they have to fight for the Carver's. Can I just go, for one moment, Julius Lipner. Just to take a little more about the Baguad Gita itself, where and when was it written

and in what language it's been well described by Ramas, where it is in the Mahamharata and what the Mahabharata is, so we have the context, we have the holding of Russian. What about the Gita itself, which seems that it has been something can be plucked out of this enormous epic? Well, yes, that's how it's been treated by Hindu tradition and by scholars outside Hindu tradition, as if it were a self-contained text.

And as Ram has said, there's scholarly dispute as to whether the Gita is an integral part of the text or not. It is written in Sanskrit and Sanskrit is an anglicized form of that language from which we get the word sanskrit called Sanskrita and samscrita means polished, refined so nobody believes that on the battlefield

except perhaps very few fundamentalists nobody believes that Krishna and Arjuna spoke to each other in polished Sanskrit verse and it's also written in verse. It's got a wonderful cadence to it. The date of the Gita is, again, a subject of dispute. And scholars have placed it anywhere

from the 4th of 5th century BC to the 3rd or 4th century, CE. I think it's written really or it was composed round about the beginning of the common era. And it occurs, it's been handed down, it's been, it's the received version is 700 verses in 18 chapters. So that's generally the text commented upon, though occasionally you've got additional verses in the Gita.

But it's in a beautiful language, and this language Sanskrit has its own gravitas, its own majesty, its own cadence. Also the source language of most of the European languages? Well, it's an Indo-European language, yes. And I can read a couple of verses in the Sanskrit, just to give you a sense of the cadence. This is taken from the second chapter, the first verse.

And as Rang was explaining, Arjuna doesn't want to fight. He's dejected. He sees family members facing him in battle. And he is... He's the leader of the good guys, as it were. Sorry to be so Western about it. Well, again, I don't think there's a clear... No, that was a good guy or a bad guy.

Unnecessary interpulation. Please, Rene. Well, here's how to one goes in the original Sanskrit. Tam titha, krippaya, Vishim, Asru, Purnakshanam, Vishidantamidam, wakiam, wavacham of the Sudana. And that means the slayer of Madhu, which is Krishna, said these words to him, Arjuna, whose sorrowing and looking upset and tearful was overcome with pity.

And the second verse I can read is regarded as the supreme verse of the Ghihi. and this is the last chapter 1866. So, the Dharman Parita-Jia, ma meekam-sharana-vraja, ahamthwa-pape-bhyo, Mokshayishiami, ma-su-chaha. So you can see the cadence, and that means,

having given up all observances, come to me as your sole refuge. And this is what Krishna is saying to Arjuna, I shall free you from all your transgressions, don't grieve. So this has resists. has resonated down the ages and has gripped the minds, the psyches of Hindus of all persuasions down the ages. Is it possible to say how the Gita sort of fits in to the religious complexities of India at that time?

I'm going to refer this, move over to Jessica to talk in more detail about this, but could you give us your headline of that? Yes, I mean, the Gita occurs historically at a crossroads, of a tremendous amount of synthesizing effort in Hindu tradition and Hindu religion. And you've got influences from all sides within the Vedic tradition, which is the more orthodox tradition of Hinduism,

and also from those who had positioned themselves outside it, like the Buddhists, for example, and various wandering mendicants. And the Githa is trying to synthesize doctrines of knowledge, doctrines of action at the time, renunciation, especially love, because that's something new that the Gita is talking about, the love of the individual for the supreme being, and vice versa,

and how one is supposed to function in the world without being off the world. Jessica, can you take that on? This mix, which Julius has indicated, from what I've read, reading for this program, with the three of you. It was an extraordinary seething mass, but did the Gita self-consciously trying to be something that synthesized? Did it set out to, is there any sense would it set out to do that or what? That's one of the biggest questions that academics would like to be able to answer. It's one of the great mysteries in a way. As Julius said, it's a hugely pluralistic

culture. We think of ourselves in the modern world now as global, pluralistic, lots of cultures, But actually that's what's happening at that time in India. You've got lots of different tribes and they all have their own gods. You've got lots of different kingdoms. It's a bit like ancient Greece in their own power struggles. You've got Brahmins trying to maintain their power, kings claiming their own power. And you've got lots of different philosophical systems vying with each other, the Vedic ritualists, the Vedanta philosophy, Samkhya,

which is sort of an ancient Gnostic philosophy that divides spirit and matter. You've got yoga, you've got these new people around the Buddhists and the Jines. So there's a huge sense of competition between different groups. And I think more than anything, the Gita is facing a very major tension in the culture between this new ascetic mode of religion. People, young people are leaving their homes, leaving their professions, leaving their villages, literally going out into the forest to focus on a very otherworldly goal. of moksha, of trying to achieve liberation.

This is exciting, it's compelling, it's powerful. But on the other hand, you've got people saying, what about the world, what about society, what about Dharma? Are you really going to give up? Dharma being something approximating to duty. Exactly. What about your social duty, righteousness, your concern for social justice and the people around you?

How are we going to reconcile these two major religious concerns? It's a very universal question in many ways. And I think the Gita, my own feeling, is that the Gita is a very intelligent text. Whoever it was composed by in its detail, it does an excellent job of coming up with very coherent concepts that manage to bring all of these ideas, these many gods, these many religious styles and philosophies,

together in one single coherent text. We don't have any idea who wrote it? Oh, golly. That's another one, is it? Shall we pass on that and do another program who actually wrote it? Yeah, exactly. There are debates. You know, some people will say it was the...

the Brahmins who are bringing sort of classic Vedantic philosophy forward into this new kingly ethos of the urban culture that's developed at that time. Other people will say it's the Khashachshachshahs, the kings, who are developing their own philosophy that's

coherent with their active, worldly way of life. We don't really know. What's fascinating about that and we must resist, or I must resist it, or I must resisted, everything you said and what's been said before touches on you mentioned the Greeks and the references references, spring up in one's mind

to the Greek gods and Zeus being like Krishna and even the verse that you read so wonderfully, that will become a collector's item. That as the teachings in the New Testament so it's all swirling around these religions which is extraordinarily exciting.

But let's stick to this. The Gita, the action of the book is actually a discussion, isn't it? And it's had all this power, but we're talking about it. A man is overlooking the enemy, he's gone into a hill, and he's charioteer, who is

also the God Krishna, who has said to them, one of you can have my army, the other you can have me, and he's taken him, he's, Krishna, he's in discussion with this young man as to whether or not he should lead the army against what he sees across the hill, as his

cousins, old friends, teachers, and so on, why should he waste everybody's life? It's a very sensible question, he asks, and the charioteer, Krishna, response to him. So we're talking about action, as it were, delayed through by this

huge discussion between them. Yeah, I mean, I think it's important to see that it's an incredibly dramatic moment of crisis, both personal crisis. Arjuna is supposed to be the great general, and yet he's sitting there having effectively a nervous breakdown in the middle of the battlefield

and saying, I don't want to be a king, this is a mess. We all know politics is a mess. I want to go be a yogi and live in the forest and and achieve moksha. It's a bit like, you know, Barack Obama says, forget it, I'm leaving, I'm going to go out and do yoga for the rest of my life. Very inconvenient.

It's a social problem and it's a personal problem. And in the middle of this, I think you're right, it's interesting to see that what is the solution? The solution is a philosophical discussion. Well, let's get to that, Ram. Krishna uses three main arguments to try to persuade Adjune, if we could go through them quite briskly, but he won't give in until the final, final, final clincher of the final argument,

will he? So can we just have the first one? There's a metaphysical argument, a correct action argument, and a devotion to God argument. That's right. Yes. So the first argument is an argument about philosophical insight. And essentially it says,

what do you take to be this world of individual human beings embedded in social relations? shapes is not all there is. Underneath what you take to be this solid substantial individual called Arjuna is a core self, a metaphysical self called the Atman. That is eternal. It is the same for and in all. And it is directly under my supervision. So when you act, who you take to be acting, this person with this particular history of being a brother or a husband, a leader, is only on the surface. The people you kill, even if you take them to be on the surface level, your teachers and your cousins, are not.

In the end, there is this utter metaphysical principle called the artman. Once you have that insight, you are equanimous about the ups and downs of life, the joy of victory, the horrors of war, because underneath it all is this unchanging reality. Arjuna replies to that, that might be, but I'm concerned about the present and the immediate action by do not want to kill these people, so they move to the second argument.

Exactly. So the second argument is the argument for carrying out your duty. And it says, well, in this world, you are this warrior. You have responsibility to your elder brother, who is the claimant to the throne. You have a responsibility to protect the owner of your wife who was dishonoured by your cousins. You've got all these people who are fighting for you and who look up to you as this general and this great prince. And being born into the warrior caste, your duty is to continue to be a warrior.

That is right. So it's an argument against outer renunciation. But as Jessica was saying, the Gita has to engage with the fact that renunciation had become a, a very gripping alternative in that world. To leave the world? Especially for princes, it seems. Especially for princes, going back to the Buddha. So he says, so Krishna says,

what you need is a renunciation which is inner. You give up your desire for the fruit of your action. So in a sense, almost like a cantine imperative, you act because you have to act. And the psychological view you bring to bear on that is that action is done for the sake of preserving order, not for what one might benefit from it. But Arjuna turns that down as well. So Krishna then turns to, and reveals that he is, apart being a friend and a charity, he is God. That's the clinching argument. He is the one God. That's the clinching argument. And if Arjuna goes along with him, his sins will be absolved and you live without shame and sin, and that is the clincher.

That's the clincher. So, Julius, where does that... Is it true that one could say that that is the central concern of the book? Something that could be summed up in the word Dharma. Yes, I think Dharma is the central concern... Excuse me, central concern of the Mahabharata, and it's the central concern of the Githa. Could you just tell this as precisely what you...

Because it's very difficult to translate these words. They're very complex translation. Can you just tell us what you think Dharma really means? Dharma means, well, as my colleagues have indicated, it is almost impossible to translate it by one word. But it comes from, yes, but it comes from the Sanskrit word meaning to support, to bear up. And therefore, Dharma has, and certainly the time of the Githad had had, a descriptive content and a prescriptive content.

In other words, Dharma told you what you were, what things are like, what they should be like. and so the Dharma fire is to burn the Dharma waters to make things wet and to be mobile and fluid the Dharma of a Shatria is to descriptively is to fight in fact they were

understood to be fighting machines the Shatria the warrior and this is why Arjuna seemed to be leaving his duty when he said I will not fight and then there is also a prescriptive content what you should be doing.

And you have this, on the one hand, tension between the descriptive and the prescriptive in the Gita, and on the other hand, a kind of resolution of this tension. Is this one of the reasons why it carried so strongly and carried through the centuries? Had so many commentaries written about it. They started in many evil times,

and resonated right up to Gandhi, as I said in the introduction and, of course, beyond. Is it because of these tensions that you just described? Yeah, I think this is the central tension of the Gita. How can one act? How can one do what is righteous, Dharma, what you should be doing,

in terms of who you are, what your nature is? And it's the tension between these two that you have to resolve in your own life. So there's no simple answer for everybody. You can't take it off the shelf and say, this is the Dharma for, well, three of us, because it's a situational term.

This is my dharm. here and now in terms of what I should do and in terms of what I am, how do I resolve these things? The Githa's first verse starts with Dharma Shetri Kuru Shetri, on the field of Dharmah, on the field of Kuru. So already you get a signal there that this whole thing is about Dharma. And eventually, as Ram has indicated, it's all about how to be in the world without being off the world. It's a sort of reconciliation of these two contrasting ideals of, on the one hand, renouncing action and on the other hand

performing action but in a way that does not taint you so as to bring you down from the ideal of your own Dharma. It's amazing resonances, aren't there all over the place? Jessica, Jessica, Frasio, another idea is important which, a word which people listening will know very well

yoga, which comes there, but what does that precisely mean here in this context and how does it relate to karma? I'm pronouncing the art as told by you because it's not karma is in the Karma Sutra, it's karma something else, and Bhakti and so on. It's a tall order, but there you go.

No, I can work on that. I mean, in a way, as Ram and Julius have both said, this is a text that's helping people to live in the world while, in a sense, becoming yogis, becoming the great yoga practitioners at the same time. What would a great yoga practitioner mean then, and why was it so compelling? Well, originally, this is what's interesting,

is that to achieve this, the Gita's having to completely change the meaning of what yoga was before. If you go back to the Vedic roots of the word yudj, it comes from, which is linked to the English yoke, to harness something, to link something. It was used to link the human world to the divine world through rituals, the yagya. If you move on about 500 years,

it's tended into yoga, an internal ritual, a discipline that you do with your mind and your body, where you can, in a sense, link mind and body to a higher purpose, a higher reality. That's what the Buddhists, the giants, the Hindus are all using it for. But it's a tough practice. Everyday people can't ditch their kids, their jobs, their society and go out to do this kind of yoga, which was really an ascetic practice. So the Gita's going to use this idea to make it, to create a religious form that everyone can be

part of. And what it does is it says, yoga is now no longer something you do with your body. It's now no longer merely a disciplined, aesthetic, meditative practice. It's something that happens on the inside. It's a new internal attitude of detachment from the world. And it's what your attitude is that really matter. It's your intention, not your action. And it gives some great examples of how

this is going to work. It actually ends up saying if you want to see what that's going to look like, look at God himself. Look at Krishna, he says. He says, I am acting. Karma literally means action, actually. I am acting in the world. I am creating the world. I am sustaining it and

helping it to transform and grow. And yet my true nature, as God, is unchanging. It spans all of this. It's outside of time and action. We can be like this. We can act in the world. And yet within we are unchanging, detached from all of that, part of a higher eternal reality.

And maybe the last transformation that the Gita affects that makes this viable for everyone is that it's no longer about desperately struggling to focus through meditative practice. It's very hard to achieve complete focus in life. But the Gita says, you know what will help you focus better than anything? Love, complete commitment, complete and overwhelming love for God is the thing that will help you achieve a complete yogic state. And Ram, can we take on what Jessica's been saying?

Because is it a new conception at that time in that culture of God as a sort of personal deity as well as being a universal deity? Krishna reveals himself, as I understand it, in the Gita as both of these. Is that new and how powerful is it at the time? It's obviously reflecting ideas that are developing around the start of the common era. One of the important steps that happens then is that the kings of that time start thinking of themselves as being modelled, human models of the divine. and royal power and authority is supposed to flow out of their worldly simulation of a heavenly ruler. So clearly the Shatria dimensions, the warrior dimensions that Jessica has mentioned, are coming into play here.

So there are complex issues going on. There is also the Hindu reaction to Buddhism's and Jainism. general skepticism about gods in general of divine powers, let alone a single personal supreme being. So both from the religious and theological point of view, but also from the political point of view, there is this pressure towards the notion of some sort of a quasi-subject, a being which is at one and the same time recognizable as a person, but is also a person. so beyond that. Is this new...

I'm sorry, and that's what happens. Is this new then? Is this formulation in the Gita one of the things that's original about it? As we're talking, there seems to be more and more things. It's such a very compact and rich work, but it is one of the things that's new in it. It is one of the...

Yes. In fact, it's so important. It's the length through which the subsequent tradition seeks to resolve, in a manner comparable to medieval Christiards. Christianity, the tension between this personal God, this subject who is available, who's at one of the same time, the ground of all being.

So who is beyond that? Someone he can talk to, and you actually addresses him as a friend, you're talking to me, I'm your friend in the same chariot, and then he reveals himself, which is the convincing argument, like Zeus did, reveals himself as the God. Yes. And the stars are in him and the universe is in him at the beginning and the middle of the end of all life is in him. That's right.

It is a little bit like a very full and complete self-declaration as a contrast to say God in the burning bush to Moses, saying I am that I am. Krishna says I am that I am, but I am also going to tell you what else I am. Julius Simpler, can you just take that back to the personal here before we move on to the influences and so on to sort of round off what has been, I think brilliantly said by Ram and Jessica, what is this telling people who are reading it or listening to it, I presume it was read aloud, to a lot of people?

What is it telling them about how to lead their lives then in that society? Well, what it's doing is saying there is a supreme being, there is a God, this is a personal God, a provident God, a God who shows preemptive love, because, as Jessica was saying, Krishna creates the situation in terms of which you can respond to him. So Krishna takes the initiative.

And it says in Chapter 4, for the first time significantly in Hindu tradition, that this God has actually descended in human form, the avatar, the concept of descent. It's not strictly an incarnation, but it's a descent in embodied form to show this love in practical and concrete ways. It's the presence

the concrete presence of the supreme deity. And he says very specifically, this is to uphold Dharma, this is to protect the good, and this is to discountenance the evil to us. So there is a purpose in God's coming down, which is both personal and universal. So many people might say that Arjuna's being convinced to go to war is not a good result for God.

Well, you see, Arjuna being convinced to go to war is an expression of his duty as a Shatria because he has to fight in accordance with who he is and what he should do. But God is the, I think this is not a sugar-dadi view of God. I mean, here is God who is the creator, the maintainer, but also the destroyer of everything. And you get in chapter 11, I think 11 verse 32, where Krishna says, I am time, matured time, destroying these worlds. So the whole substance of creation, the beginning, the maintenance and the destruction,

all this comes from God. All this is part of God's dispensation, and we play a part in that role. Can we turn to the influence of the Gita, please? If you can set it up for us briefly, if you might ram, about the, it was, Hinduism was emerging, as a new and powerful religion at that time.

Does it become central to people who want to make important and influential commentaries on religion? Do they go to the Gita? There's the Mahabharata. That's a great context. It's extraordinary epic. But inside that, the Gita, does that become a focus for people's attention?

Yes, the Gita becomes a focus, however, probably something between six and seven centuries after it was composed. Clearly, in that intervening period, it is more the persona of Krishna and the consequences of this personal view of God that are beginning to grow ever more powerful because the first of the commentaries happened somewhere about the 8th century.

Shankara, whose commentary is one of the most influential and also one of the most counterintuitive readings of the Gita, is probably the first person to write it. Thereafter, in the course of the next 7 or 8 centuries up to the 15th 16th century, dozens of commentaries get written because by then the Gita does become an

important element, one of the core texts that has to be commented on in any religious group within Hinduism. Jessica Frescia, how is the Gita placed inside the confluence of religions which are passing through India

and which India is helping to distribute to other parts of the world and so on? Is there any way that that question gets the answer to doesn't really? deserve? I think, I mean, we talked about the idea that it's uniting lots of different strands and there's a reason that it becomes such an important text. It's very coherent. It's very accessible. It's interesting that for philosophers, the philosophers that Ramm was talking about, there were three key sources that you had to engage with. The Upanishads, the Brahma Soutcha,

which are both very philosophical text, and the Gita, which is part of a popular poem. It's perhaps the only one that everyday people would have known and been familiar with. So it's kind of incorporating, it's almost the victory of the popular. It's allowing something that people understand, appreciate, engage with in their own lives to become part of the great high canon of Sanskrit literature. And as such, it's going to set the foundation for future theological developments. I think one of the things it does more than anything is bring in Bhakti, which means personal devotion to a personal God. It's very much more emotional, much more engaged, much more, in some ways more compelling at a popular level,

sense that people's love for God is what's going to lead them toward liberation. That's championed in the Gita, and it's laying the foundation for the kind of popular devotional Hinduism that we see still in India today. Without the Gita, perhaps that wouldn't have become quite such a pervasive foundation of Indian religion. Is reincarnation part of this? Yes, it is. Yes, it is. I mean, it was. a doctrine that was fairly widespread at the time that the Gita's written. It certainly had been picked up by the Buddhists, picked up by the Jains. It's become important within Hinduism.

And in a way, it's interesting. The West is constantly thinking about heaven, getting on to an eternal life. In India, people already had eternal life. In fact, you had more lives than you really wanted to have. You're going to continue to be reincarnated again and again. After the first million times, perhaps it's not the ultimate be-all and end-all. and what the Gita is saying, you will be reincarnated, you will have a chance to achieve whatever you achieve,

but there is a higher goal that now is accessible to everyone. Of course, it's also a philosophically important topic because when you say you are reincarnated, the question is who? Because the philosophers... Who is you? Yes, who is the you? The philosophers use that question

as a way of getting at this notion of the artmen. Because you are born in a particular life, you have a life and you die, that's your personal identity. What passes through a cycle of lives can't be you. You could have been your grandfather or the rabbit your grandfather ate, as it were, because it is the being, or me in fact, it's the being that underlies these particular bursts of life. So the notion of reincarnation again becomes a focus of very deep philosophical analysis.

Julius Nippna. Yes, and Krishna says several times to Arjuna, I will rescue you from rebirth, from the ocean of rebirth. So this apparent cycle of being where you keep on going, because reincarnation for Hindus is not a desirable thing. It's a miserable thing. This world is called... Is it evidence of failure?

It's evidence of failure in one respect that you haven't actually achieved the final goal. But this world is called Duke Halayam, the boat of sorrow. And so Krishna offers to rescue the devote of his. But the points raised by my colleagues makes another very important point about the Githa which gives it its perennial power. It's a multi-layered text.

And whilst it's the case that it's coherent in its theological message, philosophically, it's a much more ambiguous and open-ended text. And this is why I make that distinction. This is why Ram said, yes, you have have lots of different interpretations of the Githa philosophically.

Shankar's interpretation is counterintuitive because it's a monistic interpretation with Gita as a devotional text. And so on the level of philosophy, philosophers can explore the ambiguity of the text. On the level of the message that the Gita gives the devotional message and so on, the Githar is a much more coherent text. It was very much taken up by the English, the British over there, the Oriental Society and British scholars who became fascinated by and did quite a lot of work on aspects of Indian thought

and Indian religion and philosophy. Can you tell us what they made of the Gita and why they went for it, not for it, why they adopted it so enthusiastically? I think it's interesting, see, the rest of the world, especially the world of Christian, Jewish, Muslim religion, where they have clear founders of the religion, where you have clear texts that are canonical. They get to India and...

You have the book. You have the book. You have the doctrine. You have creed. You have a founder. You get to India and you don't have any of these things in any clear way. It's one of the world's most pluralistic and diverse cultures. So the British and other Europeans are trying to figure out what is the core they can latch on to that will make sense of things.

Many Hindu texts are vast. The Vedas are vast. The piranhas are huge texts. and many huge texts, but the Gita is a small, clear text that brings together most of the key threads of Indian philosophy. So it was really important, I think, in that way, to give people a handle by which to start to have access to the richness of Indian culture.

In the way they did it, Ram, did they skew it to, parallel to the New Testament, too much for the good of scholarship, or did they turn it, did they westernize it, Did they miss a lot? Well, the first translation, which was, I think, about 1785, was actually fairly accurate. Because the original encounter, Wilkes,

the original Western scholars of the Githa were actually people who learned the languages, they were deeply engaged in a retrieval of an oral culture. I think the reinterpretations of the Githa, we wouldn't really call them skewed because they are themselves, interesting insights into why and how people read these materials and some of these creative interpretations

are as much by Hindus themselves in the 19th century seeking to repossess this text as by Westerners, especially at the height of the Enlightenment, wanting to see in it parallels to the West but also equally trying to find what was original about India, what was so other about India. I'm going to Julie who sent you, Jessica.

Well, you ask if the Githa was accepted by the Westerners because they tried to see similarities between Christianity. Here is a very interesting piece of information. In 1962, the Penguin Classic Edition, the translation of the Githan to English, was published by a Spanish thinker, Juan Mascaro. Would you believe it? I mean, academics who hear this will fall flat on their faces in envy. But would you believe that the first edition of the Penguin Classic sold 560,923 copies? I mean, most of us can manage to sell 23 copies of what we write academically. The second edition, 1965, sold 78,832.

And the third edition in 2003 sold 68,142. So in all, 707,897. You know, do you know why? It's because he was deeply influenced by the King James Bible, whose 400th anniversary we celebrate now. And I'll give you one or two examples. Just one, please.

Just one, right. Well, look, this is, he's translating Gita 1136. Yeah. And the text actually says, if I try and translate it quite literally, it is right, Krishna, says Arjuna, that, through praising you,

the world rejoices and is pleased. This is how Mascaro translates it. I will be glad and rejoice in thee. I will sing praise to thy name, or thou most high. Well, he translated it rather, it is right to God that people sing thy praises and that they are glad to rejoice in thee. And I read before that Psalm 9-2 from the King James Bible

where you have these same phrases. So Muscaro was deeply influenced by the King James Bible in his translation of the Gita. Jessica. I'm just absolutely affirming that. And yet it's also interesting to see that sometimes they missed what was so different and distinctively Hindu about the Gita.

It's not to be forgotten. This isn't just one God. Krishna sounded like Christ. It's many gods. In many ways, Krishna affirms all the other gods that are available in India. So it's a much more tolerant text than people realized. And he doesn't tell you what to do.

At the end of this great speech, he says to Arjuna, that's my view. You now have to decide. So it's not a text that wants to instruct you what you have to do. It's a text that wants to advise you and yet leave open a certain openness for the individual to make their spiritual choices. And that made it popular on a very wide scale in the West as well. I've just mismanaged this so much so we didn't get around to talking about its influence on the Indian and the national movement in the 20th

century. I do apologise, but it was terrific. So thank you all very much. Thank you, Jessica Frazier, Ram Prasad, Julius Lipner. And next week. Next week. Oh yes, we The Victorian social reformer, Octavia Hill. Thanks for listening.