Interpreting the Gita

[Arun Gupta]

The short answer is that, IMO, D. D. Kosambi does not understand the Gita
very well.

The long answer is probably more than list members would be willing to read.
Still, I bluntly state that a materialist ( as D. D. Kosambi appears to be by
the closing part of the citation ) cannot understand the Gita, any more than
a non-mathematical philosopher can understand Einstein's General Relativity.

If you have not by direct experience understood the following, then,
with no disrespect intended, I don't care if you are all the current
and future Sanskritists of Chicago and Harvard rolled into one, you
have not understood a thing, in my opinion :

2.40 swalpam apy asya dharmasya trAyate mahato bhayAt.

A scholar of Sanskrit is one who knows the language very well.
To draw an analogy, it is someone who can identify the origin of
the pigments in a painting, how the paints were made, the origin of
the canvas, the order in which brush strokes were made, what the brush
was made of, etc.  But that does not make one into a competent art critic.

-Arun Gupta