[Advaita-l] Bhagawat Gita an obscure text?

[Sunil Bhattacharjya]

Dear Shri Rajaram,

You have to remember that there is no positive proof of existence of Bhagavad gita of 700 verses prior to Adi Sankaracharya. There is only mention of the version with 745 verses in the MBH.   MBH does not mention any Bhagavad Gita of 700 verses. Yet we do not reject the Bhagavad Gita of 700 verses only because Adi Sankaracharya wrote a commentary on it and also he gave a qualifying statement why nobody prior to hom succeeded in writing a commentary on it. That makes it clear that while the version with 745 verses existed earlier the version with 700 verses is available since the times of Adi Sankaracharya. Mind that the original version with the 745 verses has all the verses, which are there in the version with the 700 verses. So nobody  (other than some people like Phulgenda Sinha) ever doubts the genuineness of the version with the 700 verses. Only the scholars who are interested in the other rare verses would go in for the Bhagavad Gita of the 745
 verses.

Sunil KB



________________________________
 From: "rajaramvenk at gmail.com" <rajaramvenk at gmail.com>
To: Sunil Bhattacharjya <sunil_bhattacharjya at yahoo.com>; A discussion group for Advaita Vedanta <advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org> 
Sent: Tuesday, November 13, 2012 10:00 AM
Subject: Re: [Advaita-l] Bhagawat Gita an obscure text?
 

Dear Shri Sunil, I agree you have arguments to support the 745 verse view. All I'm saying is that there is no positive proof for existence of a 745 verse text prior to Adi Shankaracharya. He categorically says that BhG has 700 verses. He does not say it had 745 out of which I choose to comment on 700 verses. 
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________________________________

From:  Sunil Bhattacharjya <sunil_bhattacharjya at yahoo.com> 
Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2012 09:52:36 -0800 (PST)
To: rajaramvenk at gmail.com<rajaramvenk at gmail.com>; A discussion group for Advaita Vedanta<advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org>
ReplyTo:  Sunil Bhattacharjya <sunil_bhattacharjya at yahoo.com> 
Subject: Re: [Advaita-l] Bhagawat Gita an obscure text?

Dear Shri Rajaram,

1)
There is no doubt that the version of the Bhagavad Gita on which Adi Sankaracharya bhashya is based, has 700 verses. That is why he said that the Bhagavad Gita (of course, which he presented) had 700 verses.
2)
That does not mean that Adi Sankaracharya had not edited the Bhagavad Gita of 745 verses. He himself stated clearly why the earlier scholars failed in their attempts to write commentaries on the Bhagavad Gita. After Adi Sankaracharya's work there came out hundreds of people who could write commentaries on the Bhagavad Gita. What do you think, then, is the reason why the earlier scholars could not write commentaries on the Bhagavad Gita? Do you think the scholars earlier to Adi Sankaracharya were not as intelligent as the scholars subsequent to Adi Sankarachaya?  

3)
You cannot brush it aside just casually by saying the mention of the 745 verse as  being stray reference and that no other acharya has opposed this as far as I know. Which other acharya prior to Adi Sankaracharya are you referring to? Some of the achatryas  subsequent to Adi Sankaracharya were interested only in contesting the interpretations in Adi Sankaracharya's bhashyas and in that too they have failed miserably.  However Vedanta Deshika, in spite of belonging to the camp of Ramanujacharya, seems to have believed in the existence of the additional verses. Abhinavagupta quoted some of the rare verses in the Bhagavad Gita.
4)
Further  you say the MBH is a highly layered text but you failed to show a single statement in the MBH about the Bhagavad Gita of 700 verses. Do you then mean to say that Bhagavad Gita of 700 verses itself is an interpolation in the MBH?
5)
Lastly have you read yourself the Bhagavad Gita of 745 verses conforming to what MBH mentioned? MBH clearly tells us not only the total  number as 745 it also tells us how many verses each of the speakers :Dhritarashtra, Sanjaya, Arjuna and Lord Krishna spoke. 


It is painful to see your casual statement, without any basis. "Ignorance is bliss" for the one who is not aware of the subject and it is easy for such one to brush aside certain discussions as gossip and unproductive.


Sincerely,
Sunil KB



________________________________
 From: "rajaramvenk at gmail.com" <rajaramvenk at gmail.com>
To: A discussion group for Advaita Vedanta <advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org> 
Sent: Tuesday, November 13, 2012 1:37 AM
Subject: Re: [Advaita-l] Bhagawat Gita an obscure text?
 
I agree. Shankara has said that BG has 700 verses. No other acharya has opposed this as far as I know. 

MBh is a highly layered text and a stray reference to 745 verses cannot be taken as scholarly. 
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-----Original Message-----
From: Swami Sarvabhutananda <swami.sarvabhutananda at gmail.com>
Sender: advaita-l-bounces at lists.advaita-vedanta.org
Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2012 12:28:44 
To: A discussion group for Advaita Vedanta<advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org>
Reply-To: A
 discussion group for Advaita Vedanta
    <advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org>
Subject: Re: [Advaita-l] Bhagawat Gita an obscure text?

*OM*
*Gossip and unproductive pursuit takes away one from the main focus.*
*Sw.Sarvabhutananda*

On Tue, Nov 13, 2012 at 9:53 AM, Sanjay Srivastava <sksrivastava68 at gmail.com
> wrote:

>  Vivekananda says, "some infer that Shankaracharya was the author of the
> > Gita, and
> > that it was he who foisted it into the body of the Mahabharata." And
> > he goes on to mention that, "In ancient times there was very little
> > tendency in our country to find out truths by historical research."
>
>
> I have not
 heard from anywhere else if Swami Vivekananda indeed held such
> views.
>
> Anyway, had Gita been written by Sri Shankaracharya, he could have given it
> unequivocal advaita flavour to rule out any possibility of dvaita or
> vishistadvaita interpretation. The fact that later commentators were able
> to give valid and plausible dvaita and vishistadvaita interpretation to
> Gita should set at rest any speculation about its origin.
>
> PraNAm
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