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INTRODUCTORY ESSAY
2. Date and Text
These different opinions seem to arise from the fact that, in the Gita, are united currents of philosophical and religious thought diffused along many and devious courses. Many apparently conflicting beliefs are worked into a simple unity to meet the needs of the time, in the true Hindu spirit, that over all of them broods the grace of God. The question whether the Gita succeeds in reconciling the different tendencies of thought will have to be answered by each reader for himself after he completes the study of the book. The Indian tradition has always felt that the apparently incongruous elements were fused together in the mind of the author and that the brilliant synthesis he suggests and illuminates, though he does not argue and prove it in detail, fosters the true life of spirit.
For our purposes, we may adopt the text followed by Sarhkara in his commentary as it is the oldest extant commentary on the poem.[1]
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