Text layers of the Gita

[Swaminathan Madhuresan]

Dear Professors Vassilkov, G. v. Simson and Indologists,

Alexander C. Soper, Literary evidence for early Buddhist art in China, p. 212
 "Finally, Maitreya  was the Buddha-to-be, who in the far distant
 future is to return to a purified and happy world, attain Enlightenment,
 and lead countless hosts to salvation.
 ...
 The last-named role must have been the primary one. It seems clear
 that Maitreya was first of all, the Buddhist solution to the
 yearning for a Messiah that took on such strength over the whole
 Near and Middle East in the centuries after Alexander. The
 strongest encouragement toward defining His personality and mission
 probably came into India from the outside world. The Indian
 mind, with its instinct for expansion and multiplication, was entirely
 capable of projecting the Buddha idea into the future.
 ...
 The Maitreya myth was unlike all other Buddhist projections across
 space and time in being unique, not merely a duplication or an
 equivalent of something else. ..
 'Saakyamuni had come to be counted the seventh of those who had
 come in succession to preach and to convert, Maitrreya was the
 single saviour imaginable in the future....

 The similarity between these themes and those of the great saviour
 cults of the lands farther to the west is unmistakable.
 (though the Buddhist version was purged of all terror and destruction,
 and Maitreya was pictured neither as a conqueror nor as a judge.)
 In view of the general pressure exerted by Iranian culture
 on Northwest India in the age of foreign rulers between
 the Mauryan and Guptan dynasties, it is most likely that the
 resemblance points to Persia as a source. In this connection
 there may be more than a coincidence in the fact that the
 very name Maitreya is phonetically close to Mitra; and that
 His occasional pseudonym Ajita has the same meaning as Mithra's
 epithet, which the Romans rendered as "invictus".  ..
  The belief in Maitreya's golden age must have developed fairly early,
 since it is recorded in Hinayana and Mahayana texts, and there in the
 Pali versions as well as in the Sanskrit sUtras that were
 translated into Chinese."

Given that Dualism from Iran exerted a wide ranging influence, For example,
in the last chapter on apocalypse in the Bible, does Krushna
of the Bhagavad Gita represent a Messiah who descends to earth
and preach to the embattled people? In the Tamil bhakti texts that swept
across all of India in the next centuries, we do not find mentions
of God coming and preaching to devotees. Instead, it is the devotee
who always petitions and begs for grace 'aruL'. In the whole
of Indian literature, gItA is unique in that here the God gives
personal advice. Does this theme, like Maitreya Bodhisattva, come
from Northwest and Iran?

For the insertion of Gita into MBh later, see the 1969 article in IIJ:
http://listserv.liv.ac.uk/cgi-shl/WA.EXE?A2=ind9901&L=indology&P=R18704

Politicians like Gandhi used gita as though does not mention the
benefit of maintaining the varnashrama system. Gandhi, knowing no samskrut,
used Besant's english version.

Thanks,
SM


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