Gita Rahasya -Tilak 8

Karma Yoga Sastra -Tilak

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY Another scholar says that as in the verse " brahma-sutra padais-caiva " in the 13th chapter, the Brahma-Sutras have been mentioned, the Gita must have been written after the date of Brahma-Sutras; on the other hand, several others say that as the Gita has undoubtedly been taken as an authority in some places at least in the Brahma- Sutras, one cannot imagine that the Gita was later than the Brahma-Sutras. Still other scholars say that there could have been no time for Sri Krsna to recite the Bhagavadgita of 700 stanzas to Arjuna on the battle-field during the Bharata war. In the hurry and scurry of the war, the most that Sri Krsna could have told Arjuna would be about 40 or 50 very important and crucial verses or the import of them and that the expansion of these verses must have been made later on when the story of the war was recited by Samjaya to Dhrtarastra or by Vyasa to Suka or by Vaisampayana to Janamejaya, or by Suta to Saunaka, or at least when the original Bharata was expanded by some one into the ' Mahabharata '. When such an idea has taken root in the mind regarding the construction of the Gita, scholars have taken to diving into the ocean of the Gita and some scholars have declared seven and others twenty-eight or thirty-six or one hundred verses to be the original verses of the Gita ! Some have even gone to the length of saying that there was no occasion whatsoever for explaining to Arjuna the philosophy of the Brahman on the battle-field and that this excellent treatise on the Vedanta philosophy has been interpolated by some one later on into the Mahabharata. It is not that these questions of external examination are totally useless. For instance, let us take the illustration of the petals of the flower or of the honey-comb which was mentioned above. In classifying vegetables, it is very necessary to consider the petals of their flowers ; and it has now been proved mathematically that there are to be found combs for storage of honey in a honeycomb which are made with the idea of economising as far as possible the quantity of wax and thereby reducing as far as possible the surface area of the external envelopes or combs without in any way reducing the cubic contents of the comb in weight of honey, and that thereby the inherent skill and intelligence of the bees can be proved.