Abstract
The Anugītā has been considered as the first gloss known to us on the Bhagavadgītā. The Anugītā set erroneous standard of commenting on the Bhagavadgītā. The entire Indian tradition of exegesis of the Bhagavadgītā followed, knowingly or unknowingly, the Anugītā in being free with the text of the Bhagavadgītā. On careful comparison of the Bhagavadgītā and the Anugītā, it becomes clear that the author of the two works cannot be the same person. The author of the Anugītā, while interpreting the Bhagavadgītā, does not adhere to the meaning of early source on which the Bhagavadgītā depended and changes their meaning. Secondly, much of the text of the Bhagavadgītā was overlooked and where the author of the Anugītā consulted the text, he had no firm grasp of semantics and syntax of Saṃskṛta and violates them while interpreting the Bhagavadgītā. Thirdly, without understanding or respecting the philosophical concepts, he makes patently absurd philosophical claims. Fourthly, if the interpretation of the Anugītā is accepted, then like the Anugītā itself, the Bhagavadgītā will become just an ill-fitting addendum to the narrative of Mahābhārata without contributing anything to the development of the narrative; on the opposite, it will appear as disrupting the natural flow of the narrative. Fifthly, the narrative of the Anugītā has a very loose thematic connection. And lastly, the errors by characters in making reference to persons in the dialogue in the Anugītā are narrative slips without any philosophical significance.
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Notes
The author is aware of the sweeping nature of this claim, but proof of this cannot be given in this short essay through examination of all the forty-three commentaries of Indian commentarial tradition on Bhagavadgītā. But the last section of the Part II of this essay, which has been submitted to JICPR for consideration for publication, being a general theory of how Bhagavadgītā needs to be interpreted, which has not been followed in any of these commentaries, is good enough proof of my sweeping claim for the time being.
Arvind Sharma, “The Role of the Anugītā in the Understanding of the Bhagavadgītā,” Religious Studies, Vol. 14, No. 2 (Jun., 1978), p., Cf. Arvind Sharma, The Hindu Gītā: Ancient and classical interpretations of the Bhagavadgītā, Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd., London, 1986, p. 8.
Arvind Sharma, “The Role of the Anugītā in the Understanding of the Bhagavadgītā,” Religious Studies, Vol. 14, No. 2 (Jun., 1978), p., Cf. Arvind Sharma, The Hindu Gītā: Ancient and classical interpretations of the Bhagavadgītā, Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd., London, 1986, p. 2.
Critical Edition of Mahābhārata, by Vishnu S. Sukthankar.
The Bhagavadgītā with the Sanatsujātīya and the Anugītā, translated by Kāśināth Trimbak Telang, Volume 8, The Sacred Books of the East, Oxford, The Clarendon Press, 1982, p. 230.
Mircea Eliade, Yoga: Immortality and Freedom, Trans. From the French by W. R.Trask, 2nd edition, Bollingen Series, 56, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969, p. 394.
The Bhagavadgītā with the Sanatsujātīya and the Anugītā, translated by Kāśināth Trimbak Telang, Volume 8, The Sacred Books of the East, Oxford, The Clarendon Press, 1982, p. 197.
Madhav Deshpande, ‘The epic context of the Bhagavadgītā’ [pp. 334–348], in: Aravind Sharma (ed.), Essays on the Mahābhārata, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1991, p. 347.
Madhav Deshpande, ‘The epic context of the Bhagavadgītā’ [pp. 334–348], in: Aravind Sharma (ed.), Essays on the Mahābhārata, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1991, p. 347.
Madhav M. Deshpande, ‘The epic context of the Bhagavadgītā’, Journal of South Asian Literature, Vol. 23, No. 2, BHAGAVADGITA: On the Bi- centennial of its First Translation into English (Summer, Fall 1988), p. 143.
The Bhagavadgītā with the Sanatsujātīya and the Anugītā, translated by Kāśināth Trimbak Telang, Volume 8, The Sacred Books of the East, Oxford, The Clarendon Press, 1982, p. 204.
Ibid. p. 197.
Ibid. p. 218–219.
Ibid. p. 227.
R. C. Zaehner, The Bhagavad-Gītā, With a Commentary Based on the Original Sources, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969, p. 363.
These two mantras together relate aśvattha to the beehive conception of institution as person, which was mentioned in Binod Kumar Agarwala, “Errors Revisited in Light of the Balanced Contrast of Two Polarities in the First Chapter of the Bhagavadgītā,” forthcoming in Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research.
Cf. J. G. Arapura, “The Upside down Tree of the Bhagavadgītā Ch. XV: An Exegesis,” Numen, Vol. 22, Fasc. 2 (Aug., 1975), pp. 136–37.
Southern Recension of the Mahābhārata, edited by Krishnacharya 1906–1914.
Cf. Binod Kumar Agarwala, “The Significance of Three Errors in the First Chapter of the Bhagavadgītā,” JICPR (January 2015) 32(1):19–30; and “Errors Revisited in Light of the Balanced Contrast of Two Polarities in the First Chapter of the Bhagavadgītā,” forthcoming in JICPR.
This line is not present in the critical edition of the Mahābhārata but occurs in the Southern recension of the Mahābhārata at 14.20.51. The speaker here is the regenerate Brahmin visitor of Krishna. The latter is repeating the words of that visitor. In this verse the author has forgotten that Krishna is merely reciting the words of another, and hence he cannot be made to refer to himself as the Supreme Brahman in whom one must merge for attaining emancipation.
The present author is aware of the unprecedented and radical nature of this claim, but a complete proof of this cannot be given in this short essay, which requires thorough examination of all the seven hundred verses of the vulgate recension of the Bhagavadgītā.
By me two manuscripts entitled Essays in Prapañca of Maheśvara in the Bhagavadgītā: An Introduction to the Vedic Theory of Institutions (520+ pages) and Śrīmadbhagavadgītāyāḥ Trisaptādhyāyī Vimalarahasyam: A Commentary on the Śrīmadbhagavadgītā (770+ pages) have been completed. The former develops the Vedic conception of institution as person as embodied in the Bhagavadgītā and the latter explains each verse of the Bhagavadgītā to exhibit the continuous single thread of thought developing from the first to the last verse, showing how tightly the text is woven by Vedavyāsa by his svātantrya śakti (by the power of his own loom) around the Vedic theme of institution as person. Both will get published after the Kāla Puruṣa lifts the pratibandha and grants the abhyanujñā.
The present author has convinced himself of this by completing a manuscript of a verse by verse commentary on the Bhagavadgītā with this understanding that it is theorizing about institution as person, its functioning, its revision and institutional action etc.
The Bhagavadgītā with the Sanatsujātīya and the Anugītā, translated by Kāśināth Trimbak Telang, Volume 8, The Sacred Books of the East, Oxford, The Clarendon Press, 1982, p. 206.
The last line is not in the critical edition, but is present in the southern recension of Mahābhārata in 14.20.49.
The Mahābhārata, Aśvamedhikaparvan (critical edition), Poona, 1960, 14.47.15–16.
Kant had spotted the need but could not really work out how the two co-operated as author of Bhagavadgītā does. Kant writes “One observation is possible without any need for subtle reflexion and, we may assume, can be made by the most ordinary intelligence—no doubt in its own fashion through some obscure discrimination of the power of judgment known to it as ‘feeling’.” (Groundwork of Metaphysic of Morals, 105/450–51, in The Moral Law or Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, a new translation with analysis and notes by H. J. Paton, Hutchinson’s University Library, London, 1947, p. 118.) Mark the words “some obscure discrimination of the power of judgment known to it as ‘feeling’.” The faculty of judgment referred to is known as ‘feeling’ and this faculty of judgment is also the power of discrimination. The description of the faculty of judgment in the Critique of Judgment is given as follows: “To apprehend a regular and appropriate building with one’s cognitive faculties, be the mode of representation clear or confused, is quite different thing from being conscious of this representation with an accompanying sensation of delight. Here the representation is referred wholly to the subject, and what is more to its feeling of life—under the name of the feeling of pleasure or displeasure—and this forms the basis of a quite separate faculty of discriminating and estimating, that contributes nothing to knowledge. All it does is to compare the given representation in the subject with the entire faculty of representations of which the mind (Gemüt) is conscious in the feeling of its state.” (Critique of Judgment, §1) Kant recognized two capacities of discrimination: one faculty of conscious discrimination by articulation but another faculty of discrimination by feeling of life whose functioning was obscure to him.
Telang 391-3.
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Agarwala, B.K. The Anugītā as a Gloss on the Bhagavadgītā—Part I: The Origin of Erroneous Exegetical Tradition of the Bhagavadgītā. J. Indian Counc. Philos. Res. 33, 407–431 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40961-016-0064-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40961-016-0064-8