Gita Rahasya -Tilak 566

Srimad Bhagavadgita-Rahasya OR Karma-Yoga-Sastra -Bal Gangadhar Tilak

CHAPTER XV APPENDIX In the same way, though there are dissertations in several places in the Mahabharata on the questions of Non-Violence, Truth, etc.,. yet, as they also are one-sided, that is to say, are made only with reference to the subject-matter in question, these dissertations cannot be said to be the principal part of the Mahabharata nor do these one-sided dissertations explain whether or not people should take as illustrations the lives of those great persons like Sri Krsna and the Panda vas, for describing whose magnificent deeds, the Mahabharata was written by Vyasa,. and should act accordingly. If worldly life is fruitless, and if it is the better course to take up the life of an ascetic sometime or other, one is faced with the questions why Sri Krsna or the Pandavas should have taken part in these useless activities. as also why Vyasa should have laboured for three years , and written a book of nearly a hundred thousand verses for glorifying those activities for the general good, with whatever motive they might have taken part in those activities. These questions are not satisfactorily solved' by saying that the duties prescribed for the various castes and the different stages of life are for the purification of the Mind ; because, acting according to one's duties, or the other activities of the world, occupy in any case only an inferior place from the point of view of the School of Renunciation. Therefore, it was necessary to answer the above-mentioned objections, which cut like an axe at the roots (mule kutharah) of the conduct of those noble souls, whose lives had been described in the Mahabharata, and to explain in detail in some place or other in the Mahabharata whether or not a man should take part in worldly affairs, and if so, how a man should perform his various duties in worldly life without obstructing his own Release by such Action. But it would not have been proper to deal with this subject-matter in the Nalopakhyana, Ramopakhyana, and other subsidiary chapters in the Mahabharata ; because, in that case, such an exposition would have been considered subsidiary like those subsidiary chapters. Also, if the Gita had been crammed into the exposition of the various subjects which had been dealt with in the Vanaparva and the Santiparva, it would certainly have lost its importance ; and that is why this independent philosophy of the Doable and the Not-Doable has been dealt with, with all the arguments in support of it, at the psychological moment when the Udyogaparva was over, and the Bharati war, the most important part of the Mahabharata, was about to start, by raising to that war an objection, which was seemingly unconquerable from the point of view of Morality.