|
CHAPTER XV
APPENDIX
In short, even if we keep aside for the time being the traditional story
ttat Sri Krsna preached the Glta to Arjuna at the commence-
ment of the war, and consider the matter from the point of
view that the Glta is a Vedic epic included in the Mahabharata
for explaining Morality and Immorality, we will see that the
place which has been chosen in the Bharata for the preaching
of the Gita is such as is even poetically a most proper one for
impressing the importance of the Gita on the minds of people.
When the propriety of the subject-matter of the Gita, as also
of the place where it has been put in the Mahabharata has been
explained in this way, the objection that there was no necessity
to preach this Spiritual Knowledge on the battle-field, and
that the text must have been interpolated into the Mahabharata
at a later date, or the question whether ten stanzas or one
hundred stanzas are the important stanzas in the Bhagavadgita,
no longer remain; because, when it was once decided that
certain subjects must for certain reasons be included
in certain places in the Mahabharata, in order to explain
Morality, and to justify the Bharata being expanded into
the Mahabharata, the writer of the Mahabharata did not
care how much space was taken up in fully expounding those
subject-matters, as will be seen from the other chapters of the Mahabharata.
Yet, as it is necessary to consider what amount
of substance there is in the various other theories which have
been advanced as regards ths external examination of the Gita,
and as I have now occasion to do, so, I have in the following
seven parts of this chapter, dealt seriatim with seven of these
subjects, namely, (1) the Gita and the Mahabharata, (2) the Gita
and the Upanisads, (3) the Gita and the Brahma-Sutras, (4) the
rise of the Bhagavata religion and the Gita, (5) the time or date
of the Gita as it now exists, (6) the Gita and the Buddhistic
literature, and (7) the Gita and the Christian Bible. I must,
however, make it clear to start with, that, as external critics
examine the Mahabharata, the Gita, the Brahma-Sutras, the
Upanisads etc., merely as literature, that is, from the worldly
and historical point of view, I also propose to deal with the
above-mentioned subjects from the same points of view.
|
|