Bhagavad Gita
Decide its fate
The record
Time
An eveningA season409 pages, about 8 hours: the length of 1.3 typical books on the shelf.
Getting in
Walk right inSteep climbArjuna lowers his bow at Kurukshetra, refusing to fight his own kin.
One of a kind
Others do thisNothing else doesKirkus sets Mitchell’s translation beside his own Tao Te Ching, on the shelf at 124 pages, and his Rilke.
The case for it
on the philosophy
“In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagvat Geeta, since whose composition years of the gods have elapsed, and in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial; and I doubt if that philosophy is not to be referred to a previous state of existence, so remote is its sublimity from our conceptions. I lay down the book and go to my well for water, and lo!”
Henry David Thoreau · Walden, 1854 on the trimeter line
“His Gita, rendered simply and rhythmically in a loose trimeter line, is dazzling without ostentation.”
Kirkus Reviews, 2000 on the chapter introductions
“he gives an overview of the chapter highlighting some of the key shlokas”
five stars · a book blog on the eleventh chapter
“can they display the Universal Form which Krishna showed to Arjuna in the Eleventh Chapter”
Subala dasa Swami · Back to Godhead, 1969
The case against
on Mitchell’s translation
“criticised by scholars for occasionally smoothing over doctrinal complexity”
a book blog on Prabhupada’s purports
“He propagates his own views and ideas in the name of the Gita very aggressively”
a book blog on the repetition
“incredibly repetitive and slow”
a book blog on the battlefield setting
“used both as a guide to moral courage and as a way to justify violence”
a Substack review
