Interpreting the Gita

[Satya Upadhya]

I have been reading D.D. Kosambi's "Myth and Reality", in which he gives his
interpretation of the Bhagavad Gita. In view of V.V. Raman's recent post on
the subject (and the fact that the matter is cleary controversial), i am
giving some extracts from Kosambi's book. The reason for this is that
Kosambi seems to be agreeing with Doniger's interpretation (which Dr Raman
seeks to refute) at least in the main lines, so far as i can tell from
reading those who are refuting her(I haven't read Doniger's own
interpretation of the Gita as yet).

Comments from Dr Raman and others would be much appreciated.

p.s. In extract given below, "Mbh" refers to the "Mahabharata".

------------------------------------------------------------

                  After giving the background on the Gita, Kosambi writes
(pgs 16-19, 26, and 37) :

                  The Gita has attracted minds of bents entirely different
from each other and from that of Arjuna.Each has interpreted the supposedly
divine words so differently from all the others that the original seems far
more suited to raise doubts and to split a personality than to heal an inner
division. Any moral philosophy which managed to receive so many variant
interpretations from minds developed in widely different types of society
must be highly equivocal. No question remains of its basic validity if the
meaning be so flexible.....

                  The Gita sets out each preceding doctrine in a masterly
and sympathetic way without naming or dissecting it, and with consummate
skill passes smoothly on to another when Arjuna asks, "why
then do you ask me to do something so repulsive and clearly against this?"
Thus, we have a brilliant (if plagiarist)review-synthesis of many schools of
thought which were in many respects mutually incomapatible. The
incompatibility is never brought out; all views are simply facets of the one
divine mind. The best in each system is derived, naturally, as from the high
God. There is none of the polemic so characteristic of disputatious Indian
philosophy; only the Vedic ritual [mainly "yajnas"] beloved of the
Mimansakas is condemned outright. The Upanisads are well--if
anonymously-represented, though the Svetasvatara Upanisad alone contains the
germ of "bhakti", and none the theory of perfection through a large
succession of rebirths. This function of "karma" is characterestically
Budhist. Without Budhism, G.2.55-72 would be impossible. The "brahma
nirvana" of G.2.72, and 5.25 is the Budhist ideal state of escape from the
effect of "karma". We may similarly trace other--unlabelled--schools of
thought such as Sankhya and Mimansa down to early Vedanta (G.15.15 supported
by the reference to the "Brahma Sutra" in G.13.4). This helps date the work
as somewhere between 150-350 A.D., nearer the later than the earlier date.
The ideas are older, not original, except perhaps the novel use of "bhakti".
The language is high classical Sanskrit such as could not have been written
much before the Guptas, though the metre still shows the occasional
irregularity (G.8.10, 8.11, 15.3 , etc.) in "tristubhs", characterestic of
the "Mbh" as a whole. The Sanskrit of the high Gupta period, shortly after
the time of the Gita, would have been more careful in versification....

                  ...To put it bluntly, the utility of the Gita derives from
its peculiar fundamental defect, namely dexterity in seeming to reconcile
the irreconciliable. The high god repeatedly emphasizes the great virtue of
non-killing ("ahimsa"), yet the entire discourse is an incentive to war. So
G.2.19 ff. says that it is impossible to kill or be killed. The soul merely
puts off an old body as a man his old clothes, in exchange for new; it
cannot be cut by weapons, nor suffer from fire fire, water or the storm. In
G.11, the terrified Arjuna sees all the warriors of both sides rush into a
gigantic Visnu-Krishna's innumerable voracious mouths, to be swallowed up or
crushed. The moral is pointed by the demonaic God himself (G.11.33): that
all the warriors on the field had really been destroyed by him; Arjuna's
killing them would be a purely formal affair whereby he would win the
opulent kingdom. Again, though the "yajna" sacrifice is played down or
derided, it is admitted in G.3.14 to be the generator of rain, without which
food and life would be impossible. This slippery opportunism characterises
the whole book. Naturally, it is not surprising to find so many Gita lovers
imbued therewith. Once it is admitted that material reality is gross
illusion, the rest follows quite simply; the world of "doublethink" is the
only one that matters.....


                  No one could object to the interpolation of a story
("akhyana") or episode. After all, the Mbh purports to be the recitation in
the Naimisa forest to the assembled sages and ascetics by a bard Ugrasravas,
who repeated what Vyasa had sung to Janamejaya as having been reported by
Sanjay to Dhritrastra! The brahmins were dissatisfied with the profit
derived from the Gita, not with its
authenticity. So, we have the "Anu Gita"  as a prominent sequel to in the
14th Canto. Arjuna confesses that he has forgotten all the fine things told
before the battle, and prays for another lesson. Krishna replies that it
would be impossible even for him to dredge it out of his memory once again;
the great effort was not to be duplicated. However, an incredibly shoddy
second Gita is offered instead which
simply extols brahminism and the brahmin. Clearly, that was felt necessary
at the time by the inflators though no one reads it now, and it cannot be
compared to the first Gita even for a moment.

                  Secondly, the Gita as it stands could not possibly help
any ksatriya in an imminent struggle, if indeed he could take his mind off
the battle long enough to understand even a fraction thereof.
The ostensible moral is: "Kill your brother, if duty calls, without passion;
as long as you have faith in Me, all sins are forgiven." Now the history of
India always shows not only brothers but even father and son fighting to the
death over the throne, without the slightest hesitation or need for diving
guidance. Indra took his own father by the foot and smashed him (Rig Veda
4.18.12), a feat which the brahmin Vamadeva applauds Ajatasatru, king of
Magadha, imprisoned his father
Bimbisara to usurp the throne, and then had the old man killed in prison.
Yet, even the Budhists and Jains, as well as the "Brhadaranyaka Upanisad"
(2.1) praise the son (who was the founder of
India's first great empire) as a wise and able king. The "Arthasastra"
(A.1.17-18) devotes a chapter to precautions against such ambitious
heirs-apparent; and shows in the next how the heir-apparent could circumvent
them if the were in a hurry to wear the crown. Krishna himself at Kuruksetra
had simply to point to the Yadava contingent, his own people, who were
fighting in the opposite ranks. The legend tells us that all the Yadavas
ultimately perished fighting among
themselves. Earlier, Krishna had killed his maternal uncle Kamsa. The tale
gains a new and peculiar force if it be remembered that under mother-right,
the new chief must always be the sister's son of the old.

     Thirdly, Krishna as he appears in Mbh is singularly ill-suited to
propound any really moral doctrine. The most venerable character of the
epic, Bhisma, takes up the greatest of Mbh "parvans" ("Santi") with
preaching morality on three important questions: King-craft
("raja-dharma"), conduct in distress ("apada-dharma"), and emancipation
("moksa dharma"). As regent, he had adminstered the kingdom to which he had
freely surrendered his own right. He has shown irrestible prowess and
incomparable knightly honour throughout his long life of unquestioned
integrity. The sole reproach anyone can make is that he uses far too many
words for a man shot full of arrows, dying like a hedgehog on a support of
of its own quills. Still, Bhisma
seems eminently fitted to teach rectitude. But Krishna? At every single
crisis of the war, his advice wins the day by the crookedest of means which
could never haver occurred to others. To kill Bhisma, Sikhandin was used as
a living shied against whom that perfect knight would not raise a weapon,
because of doubtful sex. Drona was polished off while stunned by the
deliberate false report of his son's death. Karna was shot down against all
rules of chivalry when dismounted and
unarmed; Duryodhana was bludgeoned to death after a foul mace blow that
shattered his thigh. This list is by no means the the complete list of
iniquities. When taxed with these transgressions, Krishna replies bluntly at
the end of the "Salya parvan" that the man could not have been kiled in any
other way, that victory would never have been won otherwise. The calculated
treachery of the "Arthasastra" saturates the actions of this divine exponent
of the "Bhagavad Gita". It is perhaps in the same spirit that leading modern
exponents of the Gita and of "Ahimsa" like Rajaji have declared openly that
non-violence is all very well as a method of gaining power, but to be
scrapped when power has been captured: "When in the driver's seat, one must
use the whip.".....


                  ...That Krishna had risen from the pre-Aryan people is
clear from a Paninian reference (Pan. 4.3.98, explained away by the
commentator Patanjali) to the effect that neither Krishna nor Arjuna
counted as Ksatriyas. But his antiquity is considerable, for he is the one
god who uses the sharp wheel, the missile discus, as his peculiar weapon.
This particular weapon is not known to the Vedas and went out of fashion
well before the time of the Budha. Its historicity is attested only by cave
paintings (fig. 1.17) in Mirzapur which show raiding horse charioteers
(clearly enemies of the aboriginal stone-age artists) one of whom is about
to throw such a wheel. The event and the
painting may fairly be put at around 800 b.c. by which date the dark god was
on the side of the angels, no longer an aborignee himself....

                .....Modern life is founded upon sciene and freedom. That
is, modern production rests in the final analysis upon accuarate cognition
of material reality (science) and recognition of necessity
(freedom). A myth may grip us by its imagery, and may indeed have portrayed
some natural phenomenon or process at a time when mankind had not learned to
probe nature's secrets or to discover the endless properties of matter.
Religion clothes some myth in dogma. "Science needs religion" is a poor way
of saying that the scientists and those who utilize their disoveries must
not dispence with social ethics. There is no need to dig into the Gita or
the Bible for an ethical system sandwiched with pure superstition. Such
books can still be enjoyed for their aesthic value. Those who claim more
usually try to shackle the minds of other people, and to impede man's
progress,
under the most specious claims.

                  Individual human perfection on the spiritual plane becomes
much easier when every individual's material needs are satisfied on a scale
agreed upon as reasonable by the society of his day....



_________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.