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XIV] The Gītā Literature
441 describes the superiority of devotion, methods of attaining devotion, and different kinds of devotion; it is also held that God is highly pleased by the devotion of His devotees. The thirteenth describes the nature of the body, the purification of the self for self-realization, the cause of bondage and right discrimination. The fourteenth describes how the nature of an action is determined by the ties of guna, how the guņas may be made to cease from influencing us, and how God alone is the root of all the ways of the self's future destiny. The fifteenth describes how the supreme lord is different from the pure selves, as well as from selves in association with non-selves, on account of his all-pervasiveness and his nature as upholder and lord. The sixteenth describes the division of beings into godly and demoniac and also the privileged position of the scriptures as the authority for laying the solid foundation of knowledge of the true nature of our duties. The seventeenth distinguishes unscriptural things from scriptural. The eighteenth describes how God alone should be regarded as the ultimate agent of all actions, and states the necessity of purity and the nature of the effects of one's deeds. According to Yāmuna karma-yoga, or the path of duties, consists of religious austerities, pilgrimage, gifts and sacrifices; jñāna-yoga, or the path of knowledge, consists of self-control and purity of mind; bhakti-yoga, or the path of devotion, consists in the meditation of God, inspired by an excess of joy in the communion with the divine. All these three paths mutually lead to one another. All three are essentially of the nature of the worship of God, and, whether regarded as obligatory or occasional, are helpful for discovering the true nature of one's self. When by self-realization ignorance is wholly removed, and when a man attains superior devotion to God, he is received into God.
Rāmānuja, the celebrated Vaişnava teacher and interpreter of
Brahma-sūtra, who is said to have been born in A.D. 1017, wrote a commentary on the Gitā on višistādvaita lines, viz. monism qualified as theism. Venkațanātha, called also Vedāntācārya, wrote a sub-commentary thereon, called Tātparya-candrikā. Rāmānuja generally followed the lines of interpretation suggested in the brief summary by his teacher Yāmuna. On the question of the imperativeness of caste duties Rāmānuja says that the Gītā holds that the duties allotted to each caste must be performed, since the scriptures are the commands of God and no one can transgress His orders; so the duties prescribed by the scriptures as obligatory
