Bhagvad Gita Rahasya or Karmayoga Shastra VOL 02

Author(s): Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Bhalchandra S Sukhtankar
Publisher: R B Tilak Puna

Page 86

656
GITA-RAHASYA OR KARMA-YOGA
is not a pot-pourri of three independent Nisthas of Action. Devotion, and Spiritual Knowledge, nor a blanket made up by sewing together pieces of linen, silk, and embroidery; but that this very fine and costly texture in the shape of the Gītā. which bears the name of 'Karma-Yoga', has been woven from beginning to end with "a mind, which was fully engrossed in Yoga", after the threads of cotton, silk and embroidery had been properly placed in their respective places. It is true that this method of exposition is somewhat looser than a strictly scientific method, because it is catechismal; but when one. realises that by such a conversational exposition, the barrenness of a scientific exposition has been obviated, and that the Gita has become replete with easiness and affectionateness, no one will be ever so little sorry, that the insipid block system of reason' and 'conclusion' followed in a scientific exposition, which appeals only to the intelligence, has been avoided. It will likewise be evident from the above disquisition, that though the system of exposition followed in the Gita is conversational, that is, Paurănic, yet, there is no difficulty on that account in the way of applying to it all the critical tests of the Mimāmsa school, and thereby drawing the conclusion of the Gitä. If one considers the COMMENCEMENT of the Gita, it will be seen that the Gita has been enunciated with the idea of preaching the Activistic Path of Karma-Yoga, with the help of the Vedanta-Sastra, to Arjuns, who had come out to fight according to the religion of a warrior, after he had got involved in the discrimination between the Moral and the Immoral; and it has been shown by me already in the first chapter, that the CONCLUSION (upasaihara) and the result (phala) of the Gita is also to the same effect, that is to say, Activistic. I have shown that the advice given in the Gits to Arjuna contains at least a dozen times in so many words, and indirectly innumerable times, the injunction "Fight," that is, "perform Action" (this is, abhyasa); and as there is no work in Sanskrit literature other than the Gits which preaches KarmaYoga (this is, apurvatā), the fact that the Gita supports the Karma-Yoga is all the more firmly established by the two Mimämsä tests of ABHYASA and APURVATA. Out of the various tests prescribed by the Mimämsä school for determin-