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The Role of the Anugītā in the Understanding of the Bhagavadgītā

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Arvind Sharma
Arvind Sharma
Affiliation:
Lecturer in Indian Religions, University of Queensland
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Extract

Sometime after the famous fratricidal battle among the Bharatas known as the Mahābhārata war was over (on the eve of which the Bhagavadgītā had been revealed to Arjuna by Krŗşņa), Arjuna

requested Krŗşņa… to repeat the instruction which had already been conveyed to him on ‘the holy field of Kurukşetra’ but which had gone out of his ‘degenerate mind’. Kŗşņa thereupon protests that he is not equal to a verbatim recapitulation of the Bhagavadgītā but agrees in lieu of that to impart to Arjuna the same instruction in other words, through the medium of a certain ancient story – or purātana itihāsa. And the instruction thus conveyed constitutes what is called the Anugītā, a name which is in itself an embodiment of this anecdote.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , June 1978 , pp. 261 - 267
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978

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References

page 261 note 1 Pāņini, , IV. 2. 56.Google Scholar

page 261 note 2 See Bhagavadgātā 1. 20–47.Google Scholar

page 261 note 3 Telang, K. T. (tr.), The Bhagavadgītā with the Sanatsujātīya and the Anugītā (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1965 [first published 1882]), P. 198.Google Scholar Sometimes the Anugītā is selected for separate treatment not only with (1) Sanatsujātīya but also with (2) Mokşadharma or the Nārāyanīya section of the Mahābhārata (see Farquhar, J. N., An Outline of the Religious Literature of India [Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1967] (original edition 1920), p. 97).Google Scholar It is sometimes also coupled with the Harigītā (see Dasgupta, Surendranath, A History of Indian Philosophy [Cambridge University Press, 1952], p. 595Google Scholar), and could be coupled, being a direct imitation of the Gītā, with the Iśvara–Gītā (see Dhavamony, Mariasusai, Love of God According to Saiva Siddhanta [Clarendon Press, 1971], p. 89)Google Scholar. When it is placed along with such tracts, however, notwithstanding the similarities, a crucial difference tends to be overlooked. Unlike any of the other works, the Anugītā claims to be in direct connection with and a direct and self–conscious descendant of the Bhagavadgītā. This fact puts it in a class apart from all the other comparable works.

page 262 note 1 See Edgerton, Franklin, The Bhagavad Gita (New York: Harper & Row, 1964)Google Scholar; Douglas, W., Hill, P., The Bhagavadgita (Oxford University Press, 1928)Google Scholar; Radhakrishnan, S., The Bhagavadgita (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1948)Google Scholar; Guru, Nataraja, The Bhagavadgita (London: Asia Publishing House, 1961)Google Scholar; Honda, Jan, Die Religionen Indiens 1 (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer Verlag, 1960), pp. 267 ff., etc.Google Scholar

page 262 note 2 Thus Mircea Eliade: ‘The Anugītā (Mahābhārata, XIV, 16–51) forms a sort of an appendix to the Bhagavad Gītā, the amalgamation of Sārṃkhya–Yoga and Vedānta is carried even further’ (Yoga, Immortality and Freedom [New York: Pantheon Books, p. 394).Google Scholar

page 262 note 3 Thus Zaehner, R. C.: ‘There is plenty of didactic matter in the Mahābhārata – almost the whole of books twelve and thirteen and much of books three and five, but in none of these is Krishna the teacher. Only in book fourteen does he condescend to teach Arjuna again – in the so–called Anugītā or “Gitā Recapitulated”, which, in fact, is no recapitulation at all for it omits all that teaching in the Gītā which, because it was new, was described by Krishna as being “most myster–ious” – the revelation of the love of God. This is no accident, for Arjuna had proved himself un–worthy of receiving the divine mystery: in the heat of battle he had forgotten every word Krishna had said! In the Anugītā he is merely treated to a rehash of what his far more religious–minded brother had been told by the dying “grandsire”, Bhīshma, at enormous and wearisome length throughout those mammoth books twelve and thirteen of by far the longest epic in the world’ (The Bhagavad–Gita, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), pp. 6–7.Google ScholarElsewhere though, Zaehner does raise the important issue: ‘why is it that Krishna's second discourse, the Anugītā or Supplementary Gītār”, remains neglected, and almost unknown?’ (Discordant Concord, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970, p. 118).Google Scholar

page 262 note 4 Dasgupta, Surendranath, op. cit. 11, 437. Also see F. Otto Schrader, ‘Ancient Gita Commentaries’, The Indian Historical Quarterly, x, 2 (June 1934), 342–57Google Scholar; Sarkar, Mahendra Nath, ‘The Bhagavad–gita: Its Early Commentaries’ in Bhattacharyya, Haridas, ed., The Cultural Hertage of India (Calcutta: The Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture, 1962), 11, 195 fnGoogle Scholar. For the authenticity of the Śāṅkara–bhasya on the Gitā see Mayeda, Sengaku, ‘The Authenticity of the Bhagavadgita Bhasya ascribed to Sankara’ Wiener Zeitschrifit für die Kunde Süd- und Ostasiens und Archiv für Indische Philosophie Band IX (1965), 155–97.Google Scholar

page 262 note 5 Deutsch, Eliot and van Buitenen, J. A. B., A Source Book of Advaita Vedānta (Honolulu: The University Press of Hawaii, 1971), p. 122.Google Scholar

page 262 note 6 Telang, K. T., op. cit. p. 207.Google Scholar

page 262 note 7 ibid. p. 206.

page 263 note 1 Douglas, W.Hill, P., op. cit. p. 23.Google Scholar

page 263 note 2 Telang, K. T., op. ci. pp. 229–30.Google Scholar

page 263 note 3 Mahābhārata 14. 16. 12; for the entire Sanskrit text see Sukthankar, V. S. and Belvalkar, S. K., eds., The Āśevamedhikaparvan [Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1960] pp. 58–194.Google Scholar

page 263 note 4 Telang, K. T., op. Cit. p. 231.Google Scholar

page 263 note 5 ibid. p. 254.

page 264 note 1 Mahābhārata 14. 19. 50 ab.

page 264 note 2 Edgerton, Franklin, op. cit. p. 91.Google ScholarAlthough Telang, K. T. remarks that The original words here are identical with those in the Gītā (op. cit.) p. 254 n. 2 this is true only in translationGoogle Scholar. The compar–able verse (Bhagavadgītā XVIII. 72 ab) runs: kaccidetat śrutam pārtha tvayaikāgrena cetasā (see Sukthankar, V. S. and Belvalkar, S. K., eds., The Bhismaparvan, p. 188).Google Scholar

page 264 note 3 According to some versions the Anugītā ends here but as Telang, K. T. has shown this is an erroneous view (op. cit. pp. 198–206).Google Scholar

page 264 note 4 ibid. p. 394.

page 264 note 5 ibid. pp. 230–2.

page 264 note 6 ibid. pp. 235–54.

page 264 note 7 Bhagavadgītā VIII. 24–6, IX. 21, XV. 9. 10, etc.Google Scholar

page 264 note 8 Telang, K. T., op. cit. pp. 271–7Google Scholar; see Dasgupta, Surendranath, op. cit. pp. 256–64, 448–9Google Scholar; Deussen, Paul, The Philosophy of the Upanishads (New York: Dover Publications, 1966), pp. 276 ff.Google Scholar

page 264 note 9 Bhagavadgītā IV. 20. 29 V. 27; IV. 29, etc.Google Scholar

page 265 note 1 Telang, K. T., op. cit. pp. 261 ff., 267 ff.Google Scholar

page 265 note 2 Bhagavadgītā IV 24–33.Google Scholar

page 265 note 3 Telang, K. T., op. cit. pp. 268 ff.Google Scholar

page 265 note 4 ibid. pp. 317 ff.

page 265 note 5 When it does occur it is often either along with brahman (ibid. 280–1, etc.) or with other gods (ibid. p. 347).

page 265 note 6 ibid. pp. 285–7.

page 265 note 7 ibid. pp. 289 ff.

page 265 note 8 Edgerton, Franklin, op. cit., p. 49.Google Scholar

page 266 note 1 Mahābhārata 14. 19. 56.

page 266 note 2 Telang, K. T., op. cit. p. 255.Google Scholar

page 266 note 3 ibid.

page 266 note 4 See Śrīśāṇkaragarthāvaliḥ saṁpuṭ8 (Śrīsāṅīgara: Śrīvāṇīvilā–samudrā–yantralayah), p.3; also see Sastri, A. Mahadeva, The Bhagavadgītā with the Commentary of Sri Śankarachāryā (sic) (MadrasV. Ramaswamy Sastrulu & Sons 1961), p. 5.Google Scholar

page 266 note 5 See Sāstrī, Sri Mahāvana, ed., Śrīmadbhagavadgītā Śrīmadrāmānujācāryakṛtabhāṣyasameta (Bombay: Lakṣmīvenkaṭeśvara Press, 1959).Google Scholar

page 266 note 6 Deutsch, Eliot and van Buitenen, J. A. B.. op. cit. p. 213.Google Scholar

page 266 note 7 One may note here a point concerning the Gītābhāṣya, which Otto Schrader calls attention to. ‘If Śaṅkara's praguru, or, as some would have it, his direct teacher, was Gauḍapāda, how can it be accounted for that in this juvenile work of his, the Gītābhāṣya, he appears to be even less affected by Gauḍapāda's extreme idealism than in the Brahmasūtrabhāṣya which rejects the Buddhist vijñāna–vāda and has but two quotations from the Māṇḍukya–Kārikās (111, 15 and 1, 16)? The Gītābhāṣya professes in its very introduction a standpoint widely different from Gauḍapāda's by declaring that the Lord, “ever possessed of jñāna, aiśvarya, śakti, bala, vīrya and tejas (which are the six ‘aprākṛta cunas’ of God in the Pāncarātra!) and keeping control of the mūaprakṛti, viz., his vaiṣṇavī māyā consisting of the three gunas”, condescended to be born, with a part of his (aṁśena) as Krṣṇa, son of Devakī by Vasudeva. This is hardly what one would expect from an enthusiastic young pupil of Gauḍapāda! And would not such a one have felt irresistibly tempted to quote his guru's kārikā or at least to refer to him with one or two words at such passages as Bhag. Gita 11 16 (comp. Gaud. Kar. IV, 31)? This complete silence is suspicious, and the sole explanation of it I can think of is that Śaṅkara wrote his Gītābhāṣya before becoming acquainted with the work of Gauḍapāda’ (op. cit. pp. 356–7). If this is true then there is all the more reason to assume that Śaṅkara was led to a jñāna–oriented interpretation of the Gītār by a pre–existing tradition of the kind reflected in the Anugītā.

page 267 note 1 ‘It is but a cheap tribute to Śaṅkara's genius to credit him with having been the first to introduce the Gita into the Advaita–Vedānta’ (F. Otto Schrader, op. cit. p. 349).Google Scholar

page 267 note 2 van Buitenen, J. A. B., Rāmānuja on the Bhagavadgītā [S–GravenhageGoogle Scholar: Smits, H. L. 1953 (?)] p. 39.Google Scholar Also see Zaehner, R. C., The Bhagavadgītā, pp. 8–9.Google Scholar

page 267 note 3 van Buitenen, J. A. B., op. cit. p. 29.Google Scholar