Indian Antiquary Vol 47

SR No.: 032539
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Richard Carnac Temple, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar
Publisher: Swati Publications
Publication Year: 1984
Total Pages: 386
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 15 MB

Page 371

GARBE'S INTRODUCTION TO THE BHAGAVADGETA
21
Hopkins, Great Epic, 384, regards the Gità as a "purely priestly product"; this view appears to me to be a gross misinterpretation of the essence of this poem, in which the Veda and the Brahmanical ritual is censured and the lustful covetousness of the Brahmaņas severely criticised (II. 42-46). It is just therein that the Gità is not a priestly (p. 41 ) product that lies principally the religio-historical significance of the work.
In so far as it concerns the tenets of the "re-fashioned " Bhag. one might still refer even to-day to the well-thought out work of W. von Humboldt, whose famous treatise maintains its value, though the scholarship of our days evidently differs from him on a few points, and though, in my opinion, that profound scholar often sees too much meaning as lying (hidden) in the words of the Gita.
If we were now to keep in view the original and not-yet-Vedantisised Gita, as I have tried to peel it out from its present form, it is hardly necessary to allude to the fact that it shares the common Indian beliefs regarding the transmigration of the soul, the retributive power of actions and the possibility of freedom from the distressing revolution of lives.
Not only the characteristic feature of the Bhag, according to which devotion to God is the climax of all knowledge, marks out the poem as a text-book of the Bhagavatas; but this fact is also recognisable from its epithets for God (Krishya, Visudeva, Bhagavat, Purushottama). I find the Bhagavata doctrine in a special but important point in the Gità, viz., in XV. 7, where God says that the individual soul has proceeded from him and is a part of himself.38 We have seen in part. II above that the knitting together of the monotheism with the tenets of the Sâmkhya-yoga is above all & process characteristic of the Bhagavatas.
This knitting together necessitates, in various ways, a forced interpretation and a distortion of the two systems; since thus only could the theism of the Bhagavatas be provided with the tenets of the a vowedly atheistio Sâmkhya system and with those of the Yoga system, only outwardly furnished with a formal theistio appearance. [p. 42] If therefore the Bhag. discloses numerous discrepancies from the genuine Sâmkhya-yoga doctrines, i.e., from the doctrines as expounded in the respective text-books of the two systems, it would be entirely a mistake to perceive here an older stage of the Såin khya-yoga.
The Sårkhya system is mentioned by name six times in the Gità (II. 39, III. 3, V.4,5, XIII. 24. XVIII. 13, cf. also XVIII. 19,) and its fundamental tenets are set forth in their unmixed purity at II. 11-16, 18-30, III. 27-29, V. 14, VII, 4, XIII, 5, 19 and ff. Besides, the whole poem is permeated by the influence of the Sâmkhya tenets, and principally by the theory of the three Guras. However the terms of the Sankhya (system) are not quite always used in the Bhag, in their technical sense, but constantly in a sense which is in keeping with the current literary usage. Thus buddhi, ahal kâra and manas, in many places, to be sure, denote the three internal organs of the Så mkhya system, but buddhi aud manas occasionally meet us in the sense of " mind, heart, understanding, view," and ahasnkâra in the sense of "egoism, pride." Prakriti too is not always matter-or the primal matter-but stands in the sense of nature, essence, natural condition" at III, 33 IV. 6, VII. 4, 5, 20, IX. 8, 12, 13, XI. 51, XIII. 20, XVIII. 59 ; similarly átman has not
38 See besides the well-known passages regarding the Pancharatra-tenote, Madhwadana Sarasvat in Weber, Ind. Stw. I, 11.