Culture of India :: Ancient World Culture

It is non surprising that thinkers as diverse as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Mahatma Gandhi have found vehemence in The Bhagavad Gita, the great HINDU religious poem. At first glance, this contestation must seem odd to you after all, The Bhagavad Gita describes a momentary cessation in a vast battle in which brothers fight brothers in bloody, historical technicolor. The principal character, Arjuna, sits in a chariot in the middle of the mass of soldiers who wait -- surprisingly patiently -- as Arjuna looks into his conscience and questions his prophesy charioteer, Krishna. Krishnas temporary job as charioteer is by no means unintended this moment before the heat and horror of battle was chosen as precisely the right time to reflect on the nature of trade and devotion. The Bhagavad Gita, then, becomes a record of Arjunas questions and Krishnas provocative responses.You might ask What does this single work, a strangely didactic addition to the epic Mahabharata, say about antediluvi an patriarch INDIA? What does this work say about modern India? Can a interlingual rendition of The Bhagavad Gita help us today to recreate lifespan in Indian societies some 25 centuries ago? Can a reading of The Bhagavad Gita shit elements of Indian life?It is doubtful that Emerson read The Bhagavad Gita as a guide to the world of the Hindoos (as he would have spelled it). It is doubtful that he felt he knew India as a result of his reading, much as people (foolishly?) tactile property they know a country by reading a turn and tourism guide to that nation. Instead, Emerson responded to the great concepts and questions that The Bhagavad Gita explores the notion that an individual human life is but part of a greater reality of which humans, likewise, are a part the notion of the transitory nature of suffering and pain (not to stir pleasure) the valorizing of the spiritual, not the material, part of human nature.