Bhagavad Gita

Also called: Gita · Topic: Society in Early India: Kinship, Varna-Jati, Women · NCERT: Class 9, Ch 5 "State and Society up to 1000 CE"; Class 12, Ch 3 "Kinship, Caste and Class - Early Societies"

Meaning

The Bhagavad Gita (also called the Gita) is the most famous didactic (teaching) part of the Mahabharata. It is found in the Bhishma Parva (the book of the epic named after Bhishma). In it, Krishna advises Arjuna on the battlefield just before the war begins.

It matters because it shows how a story about a war became a text that teaches duty, varna and devotion. One reading dates it to roughly the 1st or 2nd century CE [2], so it is a good example of how historians date the different layers of the epic.

Explanation

Background: a teaching text inside a story

• The Mahabharata has two kinds of material:
• Narrative portions are the stories: the dice game, the exile, the war, Draupadi and Karna.

• Didactic portions give rules and teaching. They tell people how they ought to behave.

• The Bhagavad Gita is the best-known didactic portion of the epic.

• Historians think the didactic parts were added later to a text that at first was mostly story.
• The Gita is dated by one reading to roughly the 1st or 2nd century CE [2]. This is later than the core war story.

Main features

• Setting: The armies of the Pandavas and the Kauravas face each other at Kurukshetra. Krishna is driving Arjuna's chariot.
• Arjuna's doubt: He sees his relatives and teachers in the enemy army. He does not want to fight.
• Krishna's answer: Krishna tells him to do his svadharma (the duty of his own varna). Arjuna is a Kshatriya (a member of the warrior varna), so he must fight.
• Key ideas (settled textbook teaching):
• karma (action): do your duty without being attached to its reward
• bhakti (loving devotion to God)

• jnana (knowledge)

• Form: In its standard form it has 18 chapters and about 700 verses. It is written as a dialogue (a conversation).

• Link to varna: The Gita ties each person's moral duty to their varna (the four ranked social orders of Brahmanical texts). So it is also evidence of Brahmanical ideas about how society should be ordered.

How it fits the epic's growth

• Stage 1 (oral): Sutas were charioteer-bards who rode into battle with Kshatriya warriors. They sang about their deeds. There is a link here: in the Gita, Krishna himself acts as a charioteer.
• Stage 2 (from the 5th century BCE): Brahmanas took over the text and began writing it down. Tradition names Vyasa as the author. Scholars see him as a compiler of older material, placed around the 5th century BCE [3].
• Stage 3 (c. 200 BCE–200 CE), the Vishnu phase: Krishna is now identified with the god Vishnu. The epic takes in devotional (bhakti) religion.

• The Gita's probable date of the 1st–2nd century CE [2] falls inside this phase. Its stress on devotion to Krishna fits this stage.

• Stage 4 (c. 200–400 CE): More large didactic additions were made. They are close in spirit to the Manusmriti (the Brahmanical law-book on varna duties, marriage and women).

• The whole text reached its present form by about 400 CE [2]. It grew from under 10,000 verses to about 100,000 verses, which makes it the longest poem ever composed [2].

Results and legacy

• The Gita became a text that people studied and read on its own, apart from the epic.
• The epic's stories, including Krishna's advice to Arjuna, live on in sculpture, painting and performance (theatre, dance, puppetry, recitation).
• The critical edition project, associated with V.S. Sukthankar and the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, compares the many versions of the epic. The Gita is one part of this work [5].

Time, place and evidence

• Date: Roughly the 1st or 2nd century CE, according to one reading [2]. This date is approximate, and scholars do not all agree on it.
• Wider context: The Vishnu phase of the epic, c. 200 BCE–200 CE. The full epic was complete by about 400 CE [2].
• Setting in the story: The battlefield of Kurukshetra, in the Kuru–Panchala region where the epic is set.
• Key figures: Krishna (identified with Vishnu in this phase), Arjuna (a Pandava and a Kshatriya warrior) and Vyasa (the traditional compiler [3]).
• How we know:
• Textual evidence: The Gita is part of the Sanskrit text of the Mahabharata. Its simple Sanskrit is easier than the language of the Vedas or of prashastis (praise-poems for kings). This points to a wide audience.
• Style and content: Historians date it as a later layer because its devotional and rule-giving content matches the later phases of the epic.
• No independent proof: Tradition calls the epic itihasa ("thus it was"). But no inscription or other record proves that the war really happened. Digs at Hastinapura by B.B. Lal (1951–52) found modest mud-brick and burnt-brick houses, not the grand capital the epic describes [4].

Don't confuse with

• Mahabharata (narrative portions): The war story came first and was carried by the sutas. The Gita is a later didactic layer placed inside that story.
• Manusmriti: This is a separate Brahmanical law-book. The Gita is part of the Mahabharata. Only the later didactic additions to the epic (c. 200–400 CE) are described as Manusmriti-like.
• Bhagavata Purana: This is a separate Purana that tells the stories of Krishna's life. The Gita is Krishna's sermon to Arjuna in the Bhishma Parva of the Mahabharata.
• Vyasa as author: Tradition credits Vyasa (c. 5th century BCE) [3]. Do not use this date for the Gita, which is dated to about the 1st–2nd century CE [2].

Prelims Hooks

• The Bhagavad Gita is a didactic portion of the Mahabharata, found in the Bhishma Parva.
• It is a dialogue between Krishna (Arjuna's charioteer) and Arjuna at Kurukshetra.
• Date: roughly the 1st–2nd century CE [2]. This is later than the core war story and falls in the Vishnu phase (c. 200 BCE–200 CE).
• Order of the epic's growth: sutas (oral) → Brahmanas writing it down (from the 5th century BCE) → Vishnu phase (c. 200 BCE–200 CE) → Manusmriti-like additions (c. 200–400 CE).
• The Mahabharata reached its present form by about 400 CE and has about 100,000 verses, making it the longest poem composed [2].
• Trap: the Gita is not a separate law-book like the Manusmriti, and it is not from Vyasa's traditional date of the 5th century BCE [3].

Mains Points

• Dating texts by layer: The Gita shows that the Mahabharata is a process, not a snapshot. Its devotional teaching and focus on varna-duty belong to a later layer, dated to about the 1st–2nd century CE [2]. Any social fact taken from it should be dated to that layer, not to "the epic" in general. This is the standard way to answer "How do historians use literary sources?"
• Religion and social order: The Gita links bhakti (Krishna as Vishnu) with svadharma (duty set by varna).
• It shows how Brahmanical editors used a popular story to spread varna norms.
• Because its Sanskrit is simple, it could reach a wide audience.

• This is useful for GS-I answers on how Vaishnavism grew and how varna ideas spread.

• Normative versus actual: The Gita is prescriptive, meaning it tells people how they should behave. Like other didactic parts of the epic, it records what elites wanted, not what society actually did. Historians should check it against other sources, such as archaeology at Hastinapura [4].

Related concepts

• Composition of the Mahabharata
• Sutas
• Vyasa
• Narrative and didactic sections
• Itihasa
• Hastinapura
• Draupadi's marriage
• Mahashweta Devi
• Ramayana

Read more

• Handling texts: the Mahabharata as a dynamic source