Great Indian Religion

Author(s): G T Bettany
Publisher: Ward Lock Bowden and Co

Page 71

THE BHAGAVAD-GITA.
59 tively modern time. It includes the whole cycle of Hindu mythology since the Vedas, and practically represents a deification of human heroes, side by side with views of Divine incarnation. Its central story relates a prehistoric struggle between two families descended from the Moon god for a tract of country around Delhi. It is believed to have existed in a considerably developed form five or six centuries before Christ, but it has been greatly modified by subsequent Brahmanic additions, especially didactic and religious in their nature, teaching the submission of the military to the Brahman power.
The Bhagavad-gita, or song of Bhagavat, is the most important episode of this great epic, Bhagavat being a term applied to Krishna, one of the incarna- The Bhations of Vishnu, the Pervader and Preserver. gavad-gita. Krishna makes a revelation to the hero Arjuna, just before a great battle, in order to remove his scruples about destroying human life. This revelation in effect teaches the supremacy of the soul over the body, and in fact its eternity of existence in the supreme Being, so that death cannot harm it. Duty to caste and its obligations is highly extolled; but the poem is most remarkable to us for its exposition in poetry of the Vedantist philosophy of Pantheism, which teaches that all the universe is indeed Brahma, from whom all proceeds and to whom all returns. Krishna, in giving an account of himself to Arjuna, says (we quote from Sir Monier-Williams's "Indian Wisdom"):
“I am the ancient sage, without beginning,
I am the ruler and the all-sustainer, I am incomprehensible in form. More subtle and minute than subtlest atoms; I am the cause of the whole universe; Through me it is created and dissolved; I dwell as wisdom, in the heart of all. I am the goodness of the good, I am Beginning, middle, end, eternal time, The birth, the death of all. I have created all Out of one portion of myself. Think thou on me, Have faith in me, adore and worship me, And join thyself in meditation to me. Thus shalt thou come to me, 0 Arjuna ; Thus shalt thou rise to my supreme abode,