ABSTRACT
The significance and greatness of the Gita was recognised without much lapse of time. The Mahabharata itself says later in the same Bh ish ma Parvan in which the Gita occurs – G i t a sug i t a kartavy a kim anyah Sh a stra-vistarashah, that is, ‘whoever studies the Gita thoroughly need not bother himself about the prolixity of other Shastric writings’ (Yardi 1991: v). The Mahabharata makes use of another occasion in the Ashwamedhika-parvan to paraphrase the Gita as narrated to Arjuna by Krishna in what came to be known as A n u-G i t a (Sharma 1985: 1–11). The war had ended by then and the Pandavas had won, and the context of removing Arjuna’s grief and goading him to fight was no longer there. It is in such a changed context that Arjuna requests Krishna to recapitulate what was taught in the Bhagavad-Gita. It is as if Arjuna wanted to know the more enduring teaching of the Gita, with the earlier context removed. Sharma thinks that the A n u-G i t a is ‘the first comment, if not commentary, on the Bhagavad-Gita within the Hindu tradition’ (Sharma 1985: 2). The A n u-G i t a emphasises that the knowledge of Brahman is possible only through sense-control, and the yoga of action has to be based on and guided by jn a na or knowledge. Sharma observes that the A n u-G i t a is free from any glorification of Krishna and ends on a jn a na-oriented note, in contrast to the bhakti-oriented concluding note of the Bhagavad-Gita (Sharma 1985: 6). However, the A n u-G i t a has been considered as somewhat less comprehensive and inspiring as compared with the original Gita and did not become popular. Perhaps it was so due to the less dramatic context of the A n u-G i t a . There are several further references to the Gita in the Mahabharata, which have been cited by Tilak in the Appendix to his G i t a Rahasya.
