India, Its Life and Thought

by John P. Jones

CHAPTER VI

THE BHAGAVAD GITA—THE HINDU BIBLE

The Bhagavad Gita (translated "The Song of the Adorable One" and "The Divine Lay") is rightly regarded as the gem of all Hindu sacred literature. Hindus maintain (and few will question them) that in beauty of language and in elevation of thought it stands supreme among their Shastras, or sacred writings.

Educated Hindus proudly claim for it superiority to all sacred books of other faiths.

Of all ancient Brahmanical writings it is to-day the most cherished by the members of that faith. The ancient Rig Veda is at present only a book of antiquarian interest. The Upanishads, which are the fountainhead of Hindu thought and philosophy, are only the text-books and treasure-houses of philosophers and metaphysicians. But the Divine Lay is extolled and used alike by men of western culture, by conservative pandits, and by the masses as their highest book of doctrine and their richest treasury of devotion.

Even many Hindus who have come under the fascination of the Christ, carry with them upon their journeyings the New Testament in one pocket and the Bhagavad Gita in the other, as the common guide and inspiration of their quiet hours of meditation.

It is thus universally recognized that there is no book which wields a larger influence than this in the religious life of the two hundred and thirty millions of Hindus to-day; and there is none which is more worthy to be called the Hindu Bible.

I

In strange contrast with the bulky tomes of Brahmanism and of the great epic, Mahabharata (which, with its two hundred and forty thousand lines, is the longest epic ever written, being eight times as long as the Odyssey and the Iliad put together), the Bhagavad Gita contains only seven hundred slohams, and is not as long as the Gospel of St. Mark.

The date of the origin of the Song is very much disputed. There are Hindu authorities who would carry it back to the fifth century B.C., the time which is assigned for the first recension of the Mahabharata, of which the Bhagavad Gita is a very small part. But the highest authorities find conclusive proof that it originated about the second or third century of our era, and was then inserted as a part of an episode in the narrative of the great epic.