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And now I shall share my appreciative assessment of the one-time knighted Radhakrishnan's translation. I may be forgiven for this long personal introduction, which is intended to provide a contextual background. Subjectivism cannot be excluded from personal appreciation.
What has particularly distinguished Radhakrishnan's translation and explanatory commentary has been his attitude to the celebrated Hindu scripture, the perspective from which he did the translation and the methodology he adopted in making his achievement memorable.
It is to be recalled that more than a century and a half ago, the Gita became almost an obsession with European scholars. Sir Edwin Arnold, who himself translated the Gita into English as The Song Celestial, pointed out in mid-19th century that this Sanskrit classic has been turned into "French by Burnouf, into Latin by Lassen, into Italian by Stanislay Gatti, into Greek by Galanos and into English by Mr. Thomson and Mr. Devis." In Germany, Richard Garbe, Paul Deussen, Leopold Von Schroder and Helmuth van Glasenapp translated the Gita. According to a Belgian specialist in the Gila, there are said to be 140 translations from Sanskrit into various languages.
Radhakrishnan was an eminent scholar, completely at ease with Sanskrit and English. He was equally familiar with the various schools of Indian Philosophy to the extent of being their exponent in English at Oxford and through books. So, when he set out to translate the Gita into English, he had a clear concept of his purpose. He set it out at the very beginning of his preface to the book thus :
"The classical commentaries indicate to us what the Gita meant to the commentators and their contemporaries. Every scripture hastwo, sides, one temporary and perishable, belonging to the ideas of the people of the period and the country in which it is produced, and the other eternal and imperishable, and applicable to all ages and countries...."
The vitality of a classic consists in its power to produce from time to time, men who confirm and correct from their own experience truths enunciated in it. The commentators speak to us from experience and express in a new form, a form, relevant to their age and responsive to its needs, the ancient wisdom of the scripture. All great doctrine, as it is repeated in the course of centuries, is coloured by the reflections of the age in wbich it appears and bears the imprint of individual, who restates it."
