Naslov
The Bhagavadgita: Genesis of the Text, Its Messages, and Its Impact on the Mahabharata and on Indian Religions and Philosophy

Autori
Ježić, Mislav

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Poglavlja u knjigama, znanstveni

Knjiga
The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Hinduism, second edition

Urednik/ci
Flood, Gavin

Izdavač
Wiley-Blackwell

Grad
Hoboken (NJ) : Oxford

Godina
2022

Raspon stranica
105-127

ISBN
9781119144861

Ključne riječi
Bhagavad-gita, Mahabharata, text history, epic layer, first Samkhya layer, tristubh hymn, first Yoga layer, Upanisadic layers, bhakti redaction, dating, Krsna, Arjuna, Visnu, Purusa, jnana, karmayoga, bhakti, commentators, translations, Indian religions, Vedanta philosophy

Sažetak
The Bhagavad-gītā is often considered the holiest text of Hinduism. It was commented by a legion of commentators, and a number of philologists, starting with Wilhelm von Humboldt, studied it and tried to establish the layers of its text, which shows traces of several redactions. Some scholars noticed some seams in the text correctly (Friedrich Otto Schrader, Hermann Oldenberg, Hermann Jacobi), and some came close to a general picture of the text history (Jarl Charpentier, Angelika Malinar, Gajanan Shripad Khair, Purushottam Lal Bhargava). On the other hand, many scholars were discouraged by the uncertainties in the investigation of the text history and preferred to interpret the Gītā as an indivisible whole (Paul Deussen, Douglas Hill, Etienne Lamotte, Franklin Edgerton, Robert Zaehner). The results of my research concerning the text layers of the Bhagavad-gītā, as summarized in this essay, were internationally largely accepted (John Brockington, Georg von Simson, Horst Brinkhaus, Gavin Flood, Przemyslaw Szczurek, Ivan Andrijanić, Robert Zydenbos, etc.). According to these results, the textual layers started from an epic episode describing Arjuna's moral dilemma before the battle and his charioteer Krsna's answer to them. It was next enlarged by a philosophical instruction termed Samkhya. On the basis of this epic dialogue a dramatic religious hymn in tristubh metre was composed, introducing God as answering to Arjuna through Krsna's mouth. This was the Proto-Bhagavad-gita. On the other hand the epic dialogue was enlarged by a number of Upanisadic (philosophical) layers. Finally, they received a unitary redaction in the sense of religious devotion to God (bhakti) by redactors who included the tristubh hymn into their final redaction. That is how the extant Bhagavad-gita was gradually composed. These results imply that, over time, views of several philosophical systems (sāṃkhya, yoga, mīmāṃsā, monistic and theistic vedānta) were incorporated into the poem, as well as polemics with different (often unnamed) doctrines (especially with Buddhism, but also with the Vedas, yoga, monistic vedānta, and even dharmaśāstra). They were all finally given a religious context and synthesized in the sense of bhakti. The teachings and exhortations conveyed by the poem are very synthetic and innovative because they are derived from a very complex set of premises. That is why the Bhagavad- gita exercised a great impact on the final shape of the Mahabharata, on Indian philosophy, especially Vedanta, and on Indian religions, especially Vaisnava Hinduism.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Filozofija, Filologija, Religijske znanosti (interdisciplinarno polje), Književnost

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