Commentary on the Gita

BHAGAVAD GITA GEETHARTHA DEEPIKA: Commentary by Madhusudan Saraswate, Translation into English by Swami Gambhirananda; Sri Ramakrishna Mission, Calcutta.

Rs. 160.

MADHUSUDHAN SARASWATE, along with many other distinguished commentators on the Gita, has claimed to have entered into the heart of the mystery but without claiming like Tilak that the Gita emphasises only Karma. The author belonged to what is now called Bengal. He was a great scholar and philosopher and is acclaimed today as the foremost dialectician in the post-Sankara period of Advaita Vedanta with his classic refutation of objections to Advaita of Jayatirtha of the Madhwa school. The Advaita Siddhi, with its two commentaries, ``Guru'' and ``Laghu'', remains the most difficult Advaita texts even for scholars.

His commentary on the Gita is a remarkable exercise in drawing out from the verses of the Gita, meaning and purport not so very easily discernible by the average student of the text. But it is precisely because a text like the Gita lends itself to a growing depth and variety of intuitive interpretation. The commentary is so utterly and glowingly unique among those coming after Sankara's work. The title itself is profoundly significant. It is ever so easy for a reader to approach the text with just a knowledge of the language. But the language of the Gita has a density, a depth which requires a person of spiritual maturity and insight to absorb the entirety of the meaning.

That the author of the Bhagavad Bhakti Rasayana should stand out so prominently as an Advaita Acharya in our hallowed tradition is significant further in that it points to several stages of spiritual evolution before one becomes a ``Brahmagnani'' and ``Jivanmukta''. Even his disciples became great Acharyas one of them being the teacher of the famous author Bhatto Dikshit of the Rasa Gangadhara. He is also known to have used his great influence at the court of Emperor Akbar to ensure protection to devout Hindus at Varanasi.

He divides the Gita into three sections of six chapters each, the first section dealing with Karma Yoga, the last with Gnana and the middle with Bhakti. The first, according to him, is concerned with ``thou'' of the Mahakavya of the Chandogya Upanishad and the last with ``that'', the unitary Brahman which is the universe of being and non-being with no second thereto.

The intensity of intuitive interpretation of the commentator may often disturb the ordinary reader for he seems to give meaning to mere vocables like ``cha'' and ``tu''. He ventures to differ from the great Sankara himself. He felt that it was his duty to present what he conscientiously felt was the appropriate meaning to be set on a word or a verse. Sometimes he goes, so it seems to the present reviewer, unnecessarily far as when he attributes a blatant sarcasm of tone and tenor in Duryodhana's approach to Drona as Dwijottama. Duryodhana was in a mood of grave stress and tension regarding his own army as ``aparyattan'', inadequate to the great task facing him.

The translator is a skilled hand and he has the Sankara Bhashya on the Gita, eight of the principal Upanishads and Sankara's Chandogya Bhashya to his great credit. One salutes, in all humility, the great Sanyas of the Dipika and his monastic translator. One feels extremely humble before a work of such high quality. Did it take 10 years for the publishers to bring out this edition which was ready by 1988?

S. R.

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