The Bhagavad Gita

Seven hundred verses spoken between two armies — a warrior’s breakdown, a friend’s answer, and the most commented-upon book in the Hindu library.

The Bhagavad Gītā, “the Song of the Lord,” is short enough to read in an evening and deep enough to occupy a lifetime. It is chanted at funerals and recited at dawn, carried by soldiers and by monks, quoted by freedom fighters and by physicists. On the Map of the Texts it sits on the Smṛti shelf, inside the Mahābhārata — yet for many Hindus it carries an authority close to the Vedas themselves. This page walks through its setting, its eighteen chapters, a handful of its best-loved verses, and the many ways it has been read.

A song on a battlefield

The Gītā is not a separate book. It forms chapters 23 to 40 of the Bhīṣma Parva, the sixth book of the Mahābhārata. Two branches of one royal family — the five Pāṇḍava brothers and their hundred Kaurava cousins — have drawn up their armies on the plain of Kurukṣetra. Diplomacy has failed. The war is about to begin.

The story reaches us at one remove. The blind king Dhṛtarāṣṭra, father of the Kauravas, sits in his palace, and his charioteer Sañjaya, granted divine sight by the sage Vyāsa, tells him what is happening on the field. The epic in fact has Sañjaya return only after ten days of fighting, to report that the great Bhīṣma has fallen — and then tell the whole story from the beginning, the Gītā included. So the very first verse is the anxious question of a father who already fears the answer:

धर्मक्षेत्रे कुरुक्षेत्रे समवेता युयुत्सवः ।
मामकाः पाण्डवाश्चैव किमकुर्वत सञ्जय ॥ dharma-kṣetre kuru-kṣetre samavetā yuyutsavaḥ,
māmakāḥ pāṇḍavāś caiva kim akurvata sañjaya On the field of dharma, the field of the Kurus, gathered and eager for battle — my sons and the sons of Pāṇḍu: what did they do, Sañjaya? Bhagavad Gītā 1.1

Arjuna, the greatest archer of the Pāṇḍavas, asks his charioteer — his cousin and friend Krishna — to drive between the two armies. There he sees teachers, uncles, grandfathers and cousins waiting to be killed, and his body gives way. His bow slips from his hand; he says he would rather be killed unresisting than win a kingdom soaked in family blood. Every argument he makes sounds right — the destruction of families, the collapse of dharma (one of them, 1.40, is quoted on the “Hindu” and “Sanatan” page). That is what makes the Gītā serious: it begins not with a villain but with a good man in genuine moral crisis. The rest of the work is Krishna’s reply.

How the Gita is built

The standard text has 700 verses in 18 chapters, almost all in the śloka metre, with longer triṣṭubh verses at moments of high intensity, such as the cosmic vision of chapter 11. Shankara’s 8th-century commentary already follows essentially this 700-verse text, and its numbering is the one used on this site. A Kashmiri recension, commented on by Abhinavagupta, has a few more verses with small differences.

Each chapter ends with a colophon naming it as a yoga — “the yoga of Arjuna’s despair,” “the yoga of knowledge” and so on. These titles are part of the manuscript tradition, not the dialogue itself, and they vary a little between editions.

Many readers divide the eighteen chapters into three sets of six (ṣaṭka). This is an old idea, but its meaning depends on who is speaking:

Three sets of six — whose scheme?
  • Yāmuna (Śrīvaiṣṇava, 10th–11th c.), in his Gītārtha-saṅgraha, reads chapters 1–6 as the path of action and knowledge leading to vision of the self, 7–12 as the path of devotion, and 13–18 as a fuller treatment of what came before.
  • Madhusūdana Sarasvatī (Advaita, c. 16th c.) maps the three sets onto the great saying tat tvam asi: the first six on “you” (tvam), the middle six on “that” (tat), the last six on their identity (asi).
  • Popular tradition The neat label “karma, bhakti, jñāna” for the three sets is a simplification found in many modern introductions. It helps, but every theme in fact runs through the whole book.

Chapter by chapter

Tap a chapter to open it. The Sanskrit word is a key idea of the chapter; the full traditional title is given inside.

Seeker’s synthesis The one-line summaries are this guide’s; the Sanskrit titles follow the common printed colophons.

Five verses to know

The Gītā’s verse on action without attachment (2.47) has its own place on the Karma page, and its promise of divine descent (4.7) on the Dharma page. Here are others that almost every Hindu household knows.

Krishna’s first argument answers Arjuna’s grief at its root — the fear of killing and dying:

न जायते म्रियते वा कदाचिन्नायं भूत्वा भविता वा न भूयः ।
अजो नित्यः शाश्वतोऽयं पुराणो न हन्यते हन्यमाने शरीरे ॥ na jāyate mriyate vā kadācin nāyaṃ bhūtvā bhavitā vā na bhūyaḥ,
ajo nityaḥ śāśvato ’yaṃ purāṇo na hanyate hanyamāne śarīre It is never born, and it never dies; it did not come into being, and will not cease to be. Unborn, eternal, everlasting, primeval, it is not slain when the body is slain. Bhagavad Gītā 2.20

The second half of Krishna’s promise to return gives its purpose — and is sung at countless festivals of his birth:

परित्राणाय साधूनां विनाशाय च दुष्कृताम् ।
धर्मसंस्थापनार्थाय सम्भवामि युगे युगे ॥ paritrāṇāya sādhūnāṃ vināśāya ca duṣkṛtām,
dharma-saṃsthāpanārthāya sambhavāmi yuge yuge To protect the good, to destroy those who do evil, and to establish dharma firmly, I come into being age after age. Bhagavad Gītā 4.8

In chapter 9 the God who will soon show a terrifying cosmic form asks for almost nothing:

पत्रं पुष्पं फलं तोयं यो मे भक्त्या प्रयच्छति ।
तदहं भक्त्युपहृतमश्नामि प्रयतात्मनः ॥ patraṃ puṣpaṃ phalaṃ toyaṃ yo me bhaktyā prayacchati,
tad ahaṃ bhakty-upahṛtam aśnāmi prayatātmanaḥ A leaf, a flower, a fruit, a little water — whoever offers it to me with love, that offering of love from a devoted heart I accept. Bhagavad Gītā 9.26

This verse lies behind every home pūjā with a single flower and a cup of water. Near the very end comes the verse that the Śrīvaiṣṇava tradition calls the carama-śloka, the “final verse”:

सर्वधर्मान्परित्यज्य मामेकं शरणं व्रज ।
अहं त्वा सर्वपापेभ्यो मोक्षयिष्यामि मा शुचः ॥ sarva-dharmān parityajya mām ekaṃ śaraṇaṃ vraja,
ahaṃ tvā sarva-pāpebhyo mokṣayiṣyāmi mā śucaḥ Letting go of all dharmas, take refuge in me alone. I will free you from all sins; do not grieve. Bhagavad Gītā 18.66

What “letting go of all dharmas” means is one of the great arguments of the commentators — renouncing all ritual duties? giving up the idea that one’s own efforts save? — and the verse is a good place to see the schools part ways. And then Arjuna answers, in the last words he speaks in the poem:

नष्टो मोहः स्मृतिर्लब्धा त्वत्प्रसादान्मयाच्युत ।
स्थितोऽस्मि गतसन्देहः करिष्ये वचनं तव ॥ naṣṭo mohaḥ smṛtir labdhā tvat-prasādān mayācyuta,
sthito ’smi gata-sandehaḥ kariṣye vacanaṃ tava My delusion is gone; by your grace I have regained my memory, Acyuta. I stand firm, my doubts dispelled. I will do as you say. Bhagavad Gītā 18.73

One song, many readings

Because the Gītā is one of the three foundations of Vedānta (the prasthānatrayī), every great teacher had to write a commentary (bhāṣya) on it — and each found his own school in it.

Advaita view Shankara’s commentary (8th c.) is the oldest to survive. For him the Gītā’s goal is knowledge: realising that the Self is Brahman. Selfless action is essential, but as a preparation — it purifies the mind so that knowledge can dawn. Liberation itself comes from knowledge alone, and its natural expression is renunciation.

The Kashmiri Shaiva master Abhinavagupta (c. 1000) wrote yet another reading, on the Kashmiri recension. The point is not that one commentator is right and the rest wrong, but that the text was rich enough to bear them all.

Modern readers

Modern reading In the 19th and 20th centuries the Gītā became a book for public life:

Not every modern voice was admiring. B. R. Ambedkar criticised the Gītā as a defence of the varṇa order, pointing to its verses on duties fixed by birth (see the classical and modern readings of svadharma on the Dharma page and Varna & Jati). That criticism belongs in the conversation too.

A real battle, or an inner one?

Is the Gītā telling a warrior to fight a real war, or is Kurukṣetra the field of the mind?

The classical commentators took the setting at face value: Arjuna is a kṣatriya, the war is just, and his duty is to fight — without hatred and without attachment to victory. The Gītā, on this view, teaches how to act rightly even when right action is terrible. Tilak and many others read it this way too.

Most readers today hold both: the Gītā is set in a real moral emergency, and its teaching reaches every moment when we must act without certainty.

Check your knowledge:

Quick check

Who tells the Gītā to the blind king Dhṛtarāṣṭra?

Sañjaya, his charioteer, given divine sight by Vyāsa.

In which book of the Mahābhārata is the Gītā found?

The Bhīṣma Parva, the sixth book, just before the battle begins.

“A leaf, a flower, a fruit, a little water…” is from chapter…

9.26, in the chapter of the “royal secret.”

Whose commentary is the oldest to survive?

Shankara’s, from the 8th century.

Questions people often ask

Is the Gita Śruti or Smṛti?

Formally Smṛti, as part of the Mahābhārata. But its chapter colophons call it an upaniṣad, and many traditions honour it almost as revelation — Krishna, after all, is the speaker.

When was it composed?

For the tradition, it was spoken by Krishna on the eve of the war, at the end of the Dvāpara age. Historians usually place its composition somewhere in the last centuries BCE or around the turn of the era, as part of the growth of the epic; the exact date is debated.

Which translation should I start with?

For clarity, Eknath Easwaran or Laurie Patton; for a scholar’s precision, Winthrop Sargeant’s word-by-word edition; for a traditional reading, a translation from within a school you trust. Reading two side by side is best.

॥ Pause and reflect

  1. Arjuna’s arguments for not fighting are good ones. When have your own best reasons been a way of avoiding what you had to do?
  2. What would it mean to offer your work today “as a leaf, a flower, a little water”?
  3. Does it matter to you whether the battle is literal or inner? Why?

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Key terms on this page

Sources & further reading