The Bhagavad Gita
Attributed to Vyasa; English verse translation
The central dialogue of Hindu scripture: on a battlefield, Krishna teaches the warrior Arjuna the paths of action, devotion, and knowledge, and the nature of the imperishable self.
- Composed
- Circa 2nd century BCE to 2nd century CE
- Original language
- Sanskrit
What this text is
The Bhagavad Gita, the Song of the Lord, is a seven-hundred-verse dialogue set at the pivot of the epic Mahabharata. The warrior Arjuna, facing kinsmen across a battlefield, collapses in moral despair, and his charioteer, who is Krishna, God in human form, answers with a teaching that ranges over duty, the immortality of the self, the discipline of action without attachment, and the paths of knowledge and devotion.
The Gita became the most widely read text of Hindu tradition and one of the most translated books in the world. Thoreau carried it to Walden; Oppenheimer quoted it at the Trinity test; generations of practitioners have treated it as a complete manual of the inner life.
Why researchers read it
The Gita’s core claim, that the self is unborn and undying while bodies change like garments, is the Hindu tradition’s most concentrated statement of a position SOL examines across cultures. Its account of witness consciousness, the self that observes action without being consumed by it, connects directly to current investigations into how traditions describe awareness itself.
Research that draws on this text
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