This is something I wanted to address for a long time. It can be a contentious topic for many out there, but I do recommend everyone to read it full
Which is the Indian text most widely known in the world or what is the Holy book of Hinduism ? Most will say, without a blink, the Bhagavad Gita. It has been made some sort of Biblical ultimate supreme of what is now generally called as Hinduism, elevating it to level at par with Quran, Bible in the context of Latters’ status in their respective religions, as some sort of divine revelation as the book of all answers, the final solution for mankind. It is now posited as the definitive text of Hindu Philosophy, as the basis of Hinduism. Some demand it to be made the National Book of India. Some neo-cults like ISKCON want to establish a theocracy based on it (their distorted interpretation of it) as the Constitution. Some also advocate for it to be included in the academic curriculum for kids.
But how much of this outlandish reception of this text actually has any substantial basis?
First of all, Bhagvad Gita is not THE HOLY BOOK of what is now generally considered as Hinduism. Nor does it represent the entirety of Hinduism or is the universally acceptable text of Hinduism. The Bhagwad Gita’s global fame and universality is a very recent phenomenon, consequent to the Western ‘discovery’ of what Europeans thought was Hinduism’s national text, through their monolithic perspective. Bhagwad Gita doesn’t even represent the entire theistic Hinduism, let alone entire Hinduism.
In pre-colonial times, the Bhagavad Gita was sort an esoteric text, meant for academic philosophers and theologians, namely Vaishnava and so called Vedantist scholars only. There are many sophisticated commentaries on the Bhagavad Gita by famed scholars such as Shankara, Ramanuja, Abhinavagupta, Nilkantha, Sridhara, Madhwa, etc. The Bhagavad Gita, unlike the stories of the Mahabharata, was thus never quite part of popular discourse.
It became a popular concern only after its first foreign language translation, the 1785 translation by Charles Wilkins under the patronage of Governor-General Warren Hastings. August Schlegel translated it into German in 1823 and his brother, the famous German romantic poet Friedrich Schlegel, also commented on it. The German idealist philosopher and early inspiration for Karl Marx, G.W.F. Hegel too commented on the Bhagavad Gita, followed by many other German and American intellectuals such as Arthur Schopenhauer and Aldous Huxley.
It was only after these Western interpretations and their global popularity that Indian nationalists like M. K. Gandhi, Aurobindo Ghosh and Lokmanya Tilak took up the BhagavadGita and made it into India’s national text. Editions of the BhagavadGita were then relentlessly printed by Gita Press and the like. It became common reading in literate households. It is indeed quite telling that by his own admission, Gandhi’s introduction to the Bhagavad Gita was through Edwin Arnold’s 1885 translation, The Song Celestial. Gandhi writes in his autobiography that he first read the Bhagavad Gita in English when in London, in the company of theosophists.
THE HOLY BOOK of hindus
A big misconception as aforementioned, is that the BhagavadGita was and is the most representative text of Indian philosophy. This is by no means true because in earlier times there were many contending philosophical schools in India and the interpretations of Bhagavad Gita varied widely.
Firstly Bhagwad Gita is not even an independent text, it is a small part of a much larger text, Mahabharata. It was given an authoritative status as sort of an independent text by Adi Shankara in the 8th century CE. Adi Shankara included this text as one of the Prasthantrayi, the 3 epistemic authoritative sources of Uttara-Mimamsa. Prior to him there is not even a single commentary on it or citations from it anywhere.
Prasthantrayi included the Brahma Sutras as the Nyaya Prasthan, Mukhya Upanishads(ten, twelve or thirteen Major texts, out of a total of 108 listed texts) as the shruti Prasthan and Bhagvad Gita as the Smriti Prasthan. These are the 3 main literary sources based on which the later Uttara-Mimasaka or the so called Vedantist traditions developed their theosophies/theologies or claimed to be based on them atleast.
So as I stated Bhagwad Gita, historically, has been one of the authoritative texts of just the Uttara Mimamsa or the “Vedantist” schools. Other than that being a text associated with Krishna , it has significant prominence in Vaishnavaism (Vedantist or Non-Vedantist). But this prominence in Vaishnavism is also of Post-shankara period only with the rise of later Bhakti cults.
Uttara Mimamsa is one of the 6 main “Vedic” Philosophies. Other Philosophical schools other than remaining 5 main Vedic ones also don’t have the Bhagwad Gita as the primary or authoritative scripture. Other than Vaishnava and Vedantist traditions, the only notable pre-modern commentary On Bhagwad Gita is of Abhinavagupta, a Kashmiri Shaiva Scholar. Abhinavgupta was a polymath, he wrote and commented upon a variety of different subjects, a common characteristic of Kashmiri Shaiva scholars, because many Kashmiri Scholars wrote on a variety of diverse subjects : poetics, aesthetics, linguistics, literature, Kama Shastra, Natya Shastra, etc. So him commenting upon this text is nothing special. Bhagwad Gita was nowhere considered as the central key text of Kashmiri Shaivism. They had their Shiva sutras and Tantra texts as central scriptures based on which they developed their theosophy. Bhagwad Gita was just one of the many general texts on which He commented upon. Also Kashmiri Shaivism was not accepted by the Vedic-Vedantist orthodoxy as valid.
We should also see what is general “Holy Book” of other religions. Because the proponents of this “Bhagvad Gita as THE HOLY BOOK of hindu” beliefs often posit it as an equivalent alternative to Bible or Quran, even compare it with them. So Bible and Quran are the entire sacred and canonical literature of their respective religions. They are everything what their respective cults are said to be based solely upon. They are believed to be answers of everything regarding their respective cults. They are the sole source material of their theology, all their dogmas, their rules and regulations. There’s nothing elsewhere other than them. Belief in the sanctity and infallibility of bible and Quran is the basis of their respective cults. All adherents are mandated to have unconditional faith in those texts. So does the Bhagwad Gita fulfill any of this criteria?
No. Absolutely not. Nowhere it is written anywhere that Bhagwat Gita is THE HOLY BOOK of Hindus. Nowhere the belief in the Bhagvad Gita has been mandated for all hindus. Yes, there have been eulogies of this text which glorify it a lot. But those are from a denominational perspective and nowhere the mandatory universal acceptance is mentioned. And such eulogies are there of every other text, even most insignificant ones as well. Bhagwad Gita is not even the sole theosophical/theological source material of the Uttara Mimamsa schools, the very tradition which gave it epistemic authority.
Bhagwad Gita is not even the only Gita that exists in the Hindu literature. Bhagvad Gītā is just one of the many Gītās that are there in the Hindu/Indian literature. There are around 60 more Gītās other than the BhagvadGītā, 14 of them being from the Mahābhārata only, the text which the BhagvadGītā is a part of. See here I have compiled the list of different Gitas that exist in the Hindu Literature:- List of Different Gitas.
Another thing is that Bhagvad Gita just covers an aspect of Hindu religiosity, that too from just one perspective. The historical traditional reception of this text has been of a moksha-shastra, and not a dharmashastra, an arthashastra or a kamashastra. That’s an another significant factor that makes the position of Bhagwad Gita in hinduism quite different from that of Bible & Quran in their respective denominations and further debunks this whole “Bhagvad Gita being the most representative text” thing. The thing in Abrahamic religions is that they have the dogmatic stuff, theological stuff and societal stuff all intertwined with each other. That’s what makes the Bible the representative text of Judaism/christianity and Quran of Muslims. But here , in hinduism, even if we leave aside Bauddhas, Jainas and Sikhs for a while, there exists an enormous literature dealing with a variety of different topics. Here there are separate exclusive texts for personal spiritual stuff , separate for ritualistic or liturgical stuff, separate for societal stuff, seperate for philosophical, separate what one would conventionally call as religious stuff or theological stuff and so on.
Dharma, Artha, Kama and Moksha are the Purushartha, a key concept in Hindu laymen’s life. These are the objects of human pursuit” or the four proper goals or aims of a human life. So bhagvad Gita as aforementioned is a mokshashastra from Uttara-Mimamsaka perspective. As stated above There are other multiple different texts on each of these. And another thing is Bhagvad Gita is the not the only mokshashastra, even as per Uttara-Mimamsa. There is an enormous exclusive literature on this as well. Much More detailed things are told in the Shanti and Anushasan Parvas of the Mahabharata, with a lot of examples from Practical life. The Upanishads, Vivekachudamani, Brahma Sutras, Ashtavakra Gita, Yoga Vashishtha, etc also discourse extensively on this. Ribhu Gita, Ashtavakra Gita, Yoga Vashishtha, etc. also explore the philosophy in much greater depth than the bhagwad Gita. Other than the much detailed discourses in Shanti Parva, the AnuGita and the SanatSujatiya of the Mahabharat also discourse about this in great depth.
The vast chunk of what we call as Hindu Literature deals with issues related to various fields of academics, science, humanities and different aspects of life. The Hindu literature includes works on various topics, such as Medicine, Surgery, Logic, Philology, Linguistics, Astronomy, Physics, Alchemy,Chemistry, Mettallurgy, Botany, Agriculture, Mathemetics, Architecture, Grammar, Musicology, Performing Arts, Economics, City-Building, Geography, Statescraft, Jewel-testing, Ship-building, Poetics, Lexicography, drammaturgy, Hippology, Sexology, epistemology, etc., which have nothing neccessarily to do with the metaphysics of Dharma or spirituality or religion or Gods. Here every text has a specific purpose and subject on which it imparts knowledge or information. No text, not even the Vedas are the representative literature of entirety of what is contemporarily considered Hinduism.
And if we look outside the domain of “Vedanta” , the Yoga(philosophy) texts , Samkhya, Tattavartha Sutra, Shiva Sutras, Nyaya Sutras, Vaisheshik Sutras, Avadhuta Gita, Siddhanta Shikhamani, Shiva Gita, etc also are Moksha Shastras. Samkhya and Yoga have been much more influential and impactful as mokshashastra than Bhagvad Gita ever was. As Bhagvad Gita itself incorporates a lot of stuff from them. Bhagvad Gita is just one of the many texts on Moksha Shastra , that too from a particular denominational perspective. So this by no means make Bhagwad Gita as the representative text on Hindu thought.
Another thing is that the Indian spiritual philosophy or Hindu thought, as represented by the Bhagavad Gita, even though about the Self-knowledge (of AdvaitaVedanta) had a certain inherent theosophical or theological essence to it. This, again, limits the scope of this text because there were many diverse range of philosophical schools in India, not just Buddhist or Charvaka, which denied the existence of any creator-supreme God. Much of the Hindu philosophical approach intellectually have always been Anthropocentric, not theocentric. Anthropocentric in the sense they are oriented more towards personal (spiritual) advancements or development, with or without any theological beliefs. They are about knowing the self(Atma-jnana), Self-realization (Atma-bodha) , not necessarily some creator God. 5 of the 6 main “Vedic” philosophical schools are atheistic/non-theistic, and don’t have any place for any creationist theology or Upanishadic theosophy. Even the 4 Purusharthas and the Varna-ashrama need not to have any theological basis necessarily. So no theosophical or theological text can ever be the representative text on Hindu or Indian Philosophy. See here – Atheism within Hinduism and Hindu Atheists
Bhagavad Gita is valorised over the other Gitas and texts by the various “vedanta” sampradāyas only and there is no doubt about this. Though Bhagwad Gita syncretizes a lot of stuff from the Upanishads, Yoga and Samkhya, giving just a basic outlook of “Vedanta”, but does not present the entirety of “Vedantic” thought either. It leaves a lot of stuff out which can be found in key Uttara-Mimamsa Scriptures such as Mandukya Upanishad, etc. It is a question of sampradāya drshti. Outside the domain of the vedanta sampradāyas, one may argue for status-neutrality among the many gitas/texts. There are a variety of different hindu denominations with a diverse range of school of thoughts, than just “vedanta”. Here I have compiled a list of different hindu denominations – List of of different Hindu denominations
“I AM GOD”
This is something that has been widely posted by many people on the Internet out there. The people posting this posit the Bhagwad Gita as the literal word of God, as something of a divine revelation. People try to posit this text as something unique based on premise of it being “directly from God”. Now this not just shows absolute ignorance about the abrahamic cults, but also utter lack of awareness of the Hindu literature. This thing can be best described in the popular neologism, “Whatsapp-Facebook University Graduate”. This also shows sheer absence of any philosophical insight that the Bhagwad Gita or its traditional Bhashyas provide.
Firstly, Bhagwad Gita is a “smriti” text. It is not the direct word of Krishna. The Bhagwad Gita, if taken as an independent scripture is a conversation between Sanjaya and Dhritarashtra. It is Dhritarashtra who asked Sanjaya about what had happened in Kurukshetra, then Sanjaya responds. So it is Sanjaya who’s telling Dhritarashtra about everything. And if we see the entire Mahabharat as a whole, then its Ugrashravas Sauti who’s the actual speaker of all the verses. For more on this, please read : Misconceptions about Mahabharata and Did Sanjaya do any sort of live telecast in the Mahabharata?
Secondly, Smritis are basically remembrances of someone in the Past. The closest to a widely accepted “divine revelation” sort of thing the Hindus have is the Shruti literature. Shruti just includes the Vedas. The acceptance of Upanishads as the shruti is subject to denominational stances and within them also there is no consistent view on which of the Upanishads come under shruti. Another thing, is even if we consider this “direct word of God” thing, then also it is nothing peculiar. Because there exists Shiva Gita, Ganesha Gita, Ishvara Gita, Yama Gita, Surya Gita, Avadhuta Gita, Vyasa Gita, Rama Gita, Devi Gita, Uddhava Gita, Anugita, and whole lot of other texts/Gitas each of which are the “word” of one or the other Gods from the Indian Pantheon. Even Bible and Quran have the “word of God” as per them. So bhagwad Gita does not stand apart in this. Some point out that only Krishna showed vishvarupam, Which again is a misconception, as it was shown by other figures like Dadhichi, Vamadeva, Shiva, Parvati, etc as well. Devi Gita, Shiva Gita also has the vishvarupam. In a culture of an uncountable number of Gods and a vast plethora of literature, it would be utterly and foolishly narrow to think that only particular text has the vishvarupam and “word of god”.
Which brings me to another important factor, about this that much of modern popularity of this text is not because of its actual contents, but because of the popularity of Krishna. It is percieved just as one of the “lilas” of Krishna, not as some treatise on Upanishadic philosophy. Read:- Kṛṣṇa- the most popular yet most misperceived character from Indian Pantheon!
In the Mahabharat only, after the Kurukshetra war Arjuna asks Krishna to repeat the knowledge he imparted before the war in the battlefield (Bhagwad Gita), then Krishna expresses his incapability of reiterating the sermon there then. Krishna then reveals how he amassed this great knowledge was by interactions with many learned men and by his own meditations, and could deliver it to Arjuna in Kurukshetra only by immersing himself into Yoga. Then krishna imparts some detailed philosophical knowledge to Arjuna, in what is called as the “Anu-Gita”. Just like Bhagwad Gita is the “word of krishna”, similarly Anugita can also called “Krishna’s word”. The information revealed in Anu Gita is interpreted as Krishna being just the medium in the Bhagwad Gita, it was actually parabrahman who was saying through Krishna. The two shaiva vedantist sects, interpret the bhagwad Gita as Krishna just as the medium and actually telling about Shiva in that. So this tells that even traditionally there has been no consensus on this thing.
Karma
A popular contemporary belief is that the most important shloka of the BhagvadGita is the one about us having a right to action but not to its fruits. People posit the Karma Yoga in Bhagwad Gita as something unique of it. But this particular shloka was never the centrepiece of the Bhagavad Gita, and was made so primarily by modern European commentators like Hegel, which in turn informed the Indian nationalist imagination of political action as sacrifice. As stated above bhagwad gita was traditionally received as a moksha shastra and Karma was never a primary center piece of it. The very same contents of the bhagwad gita can also be found in Shiva Geeta, so its not that Gita has something peculiar of it. There’s another Gita, in the Vana Parva of the Mahabharat, known as the Vyadha Gita, which is exclusively on Karma only. Much more extensive discourse on Karma can be seen all throughout the Valmiki Ramayanam, and stories of Ramayana have been much more widely popular and known to general public than the bhagwad gita.
Way before the Bhagavad Gita became global, there were various other texts that were far widely translated and read across the Indian subcontinent and the world.
The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali was the most translated ancient Indian text historically, having been translated into about forty Indian languages and two non-Indian languages.
In early 11th century, the Persian scholar Al Biruni (973-1050 CE) visited India, lived with Hindus for 16 years, and with their help translated several significant Sanskrit works into Arabic and Persian languages. One of these was Patanjali’s Yogasutras. His translation included the text and a hitherto unknown Sanskrit commentary. Al Biruni’s translation preserved many of the core themes of Yoga philosophy of Hinduism, but certain sutras and analytical commentaries were restated making it more consistent with Islamic monotheistic theology. Al Biruni’s version of Yoga Sutras reached Persia and Arabian peninsula by about 1050 AD.
The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali was also translated into Old Javanese by Indonesian Hindus, and the text was called Dharma Patañjala. The surviving text has been dated to about 1450 CE, however it is unclear if this text is a copy of an earlier translation and whether other translations existed in Indonesia. This translation shares ideas found in other Indian translations particularly those in the Śaiva traditions, and some in Al Biruni translation, but it is also significantly different in parts from the 11th century Arabic translation.
By the early 21st century, scholars had located 37 editions of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras published between 1874 and 1992, and 82 different manuscripts, from various locations in India, Nepal, Pakistan, Europe and the United States, many in Sanskrit, some in different North and South Indian languages. The numerous historical variants show that the text was a living document and it was changed as these manuscripts were transmitted or translated, with some ancient and medieval manuscripts marked with “corrections” in the margin of the pages and elsewhere by unknown authors and for unclear reasons.
Many commentaries have been written on the Yoga Sutras. As stated earlier Samkhya and Yoga have been much more influential and impactful as mokshashastra than Bhagvad Gita ever was. As Bhagvad Gita itself incorporates a lot of stuff from them. Several of key basic “vedic” philosophical concepts like triguna, Satkaryavada, 24 tattvas, Prakriti-Purush, etc have been originated from samkhya and Incorporated into other traditions. Yoga Sutra incorporates almost all of the basic metaphysics of Samkhya, giving the Samkhya theories a practical approach. Yoga Shastra have been far more influential and representative of the Indian philosophical thought throughout the history. While the bhagwad Gita just gives somewhat basic (or rudimentary) outlook of just one stream of so called “Vedic” traditions, whereas the influence and impact of Yoga transcends the boundaries of “Vedic” and “NonVedic”. Jains co-opt a lot of stuff from yoga and have their extensive literature on Yoga which incorporates several key features of Patanjali Yoga Sutra. The practical approach and quasi-athiestic/theistic nature of Yoga Sutra makes it much more compatible to a far diverse range of thoughts giving it a larger and much plausible universal appeal than the bhagwad Gita with its so called theological “truths” can ever do.
Contrast the Bhagavad Gita’s career to that of the Panchatantra. The latter had travelled widely around the world much before the Gita. Panchatantra’s first ‘foreign’ translation was into the Pahlavi language in the 6th century CE. This was in turn translated into Old Syriac in 570, and into Arabic by Abdallah ibn al-Muqaffa’ in 750 as Kalilah and Dimnah, after the two jackal ministers Karataka and Damanaka of the lion king Pingalaka.
The Arabic version was further translated to Greek in the 11th century, and further into Latin, German and Slavonic. There was a 1251 Persian translation and a 12th century Hebrew one. In 1480, the Latin version by John of Capua was the first Panchatantra to be printed, and which was retranslated into English by Sir Thomas North in 1570. The repeated translations and retranslations of the Panchatantra made this text highly influential across the world as a treatise of political wisdom.
The Bhagavad Gita and the Panchatantra embody very different political sensibilities, but both continue to inform contemporary politics in India. It was only in modern times that the Panchatantra came to be overshadowed by India’s so-called eternal spiritual text, the BhagavadGita, and reduced to animal stories for children.
The Bhagavad Gita is about moksha dharma. It speaks not only of universal moral duties like justice and sacrifice, but primarily about swadharma, often understood as an individual’s caste duties traditionally, but reinterpreted as Individual’s contextual duties by Neo-Hindus.
The Panchatantra, on the other hand, was about artha and niti in the tradition of Chanakya Kautilya. The stories were about political efficacy – as narrated by the wise Brahmin Vishnu Sharma to the two foolish sons of the king, though there are Brahman figures in the stories who are also shown to be foolish, ridiculous and hasty. In the Panchatantra, the real protagonists are the two jackal ministers of the lion king and the basic message is that wise counsel is critical to politics.
As Indologist Patrick Olivelle says, the stories of the Panchatantra were so famous because they captured beautifully the ethical complexity of political situations, when it becomes difficult to make moral judgements based on purely normative parameters. The Panchatantra comes into play when the very notion of duty or dharma is in jeopardy.
Even the Ramayana has had a far more profound impact on art and culture in the Indian subcontinent and southeast Asia with the lone exception of Vietnam. The stories of Ramayana were always a part of popular discourse, being Incorporated into all Indian religions, with atleast one local regional version in each major language of South Asia and South East Asia and whole plethora of plays and other derivative literature. Most people still aren’t even aware of contents of Bhagwad Gita, but citing incidents from the Ramayana has always been a common practice. Most People are still dependent on scholarly commentaries and sermons to understand the bhagwad Gita, which was never the case with Ramayana, and also further establishes the fact that Bhagavad Gita was sort an esoteric text from the public discourse, meant for academic philosophers and theologians. The Ramayan and Mahabharat present both the moksha shastra at a personal level , embedded with Dharmashastra, Kamashastra and Arthashastra at a societal level. Although the stuff in them doesn’t represent the entirety of Hindu thought , but as a whole they are more representative of hinduism than bhagwad gita, and part of public discourse nevertheless.
A general argument given by Vaishnavas and Neo-Vedantists is that the “Vedanta” sects came out to be the majority of hinduism so that makes Bhagwad Gita the universal acceptable text. Now that’s just a generic Bandwagon fallacy given by muslims and christians as well. Its not even worth addressing. And the thing is even Vaishnavism and “Vedanta” cannot be established just by Bhagwad Gita. Vaishnavism is a highly Purana oriented religion. The major basis of Vaishnavism is the mythological pastimes of Vishnu and his avataras, and again as I said much of public perception of Bhagwad Gita is just one of the ‘Lilas‘ of Vishnu/Krishna. The thing that gives it much hype to this text is the belief of it being the miraculous “word of god”, not the actual contents of the text. As already mentioned above, There are far more philosophically rich texts which discourse on “Vedanta” or Uttara-Mimamsa in much greater depth than the Bhagwad Gita.
Another argument given is that it is the “essence of vedas”. This again has denominational bias. Many other texts have been called as essence of Vedas. Even the Natyashastra, some of the Agamas, etc have been said as the essence of vedas. Moreover this thing about being vedic is just a nominal claim and nothing else. Almost entirety of contemporary Hinduism is unvedic or from post vedic literature. The tradition which gave the Bhagwad Gita an epistemic authority was established by rebuking Vedic ritualism or Karma Kanda, which is also seen in BG 2.43 and 2.45, where Vedas are mentioned to be just flowery words and subjected to materialism , and it advises to rise ‘above’ vedas(in a way repudiating Vedic ritualism and leaving them away). And not everything in hinduism is vedic , as there are many traditions like Nath, Kapalika, Kalamukha, Aghora, Vamamargas, etc which are nonvedic traditions. The Vedantist and Bhakti cults discourage Vedic Karma Kanda more than any other traditions. And if Bhagwad Gita was ever such a big time “Vedic” text , then the Buddhists and Jains must have definitely cited or commented on it in their purva paksha or critiques of Vedic traditions, but none of them even mentioned anything about this text, as far as I am aware.
The thing that makes the Bhagwad Gita somewhat unique is the premise of Mahabharata or Kurukshetra war. But then again that further diminishes the status of the text as some independent biblical ultimate supreme.
Novel interpretations of the Bhagvad Gita, along with apologetics on it, have been a part of the modern era revisionism and renewal movements within Hinduism. According to Jacqueline Hirst, the universalist neo-Hindu interpretations of dharma in the (Bhagvad)Gita is modernism, though any study of pre-modern distant foreign cultures is inherently subject to suspicions about “control of knowledge” and bias on the various sides. Hindus have their own understanding of dharma that goes much beyond the (Bhagwad)Gita or any particular Hindu text. Further, states Hirst, the Gita should be seen as a “unitary text” in its entirety rather than a particular verse analyzed separately or out of context. Krishna is presented as a teacher who “drives Arjuna and the reader beyond initial preconceptions”. The Bhagvad Gita is a cohesively knit pedagogic text, not a list of norms.
This universal-ization of the Bhagwad Gita is mainly political, and a result of modern era reactionary revival movements and the subsequent popularity is largely superficial , based on external factors rather than the actual contents. This understanding is based on seeking convenience through ‘abrahamic-like’ monolithic simplistic worldview at the expense of rich and diverse complexities of Indian/Hindu history and thought, even undermining and neglecting the variety of viewpoints in hinduism. Hinduism is FAR MORE COMPLEX and DIVERSE to be represented by just some one “ULTIMATE BOOK” . We don’t have THE ONE BOOK, we have a LIBRARY or rather should I say we have an Entire PRINTING PRESS.
Having said that, this article/blog was mainly about the modern reception of gita, not the contents per se. The bhagwad Gita has a contextual and denominational significance, there’s no doubt on that; context and denomination being the keywords here.
Please follow us on Facebook & Instagram.: Contact Us
2 replies on “The most overrated piece of Literature contemporarily”
बंगाली
😥😵🥲