[Advaita-l] Release of of the book "The Original Bhagavad Gita"

[Sunil Bhattacharjya via Advaita-l]

Dear Bhashkarji,

The fact that the Original Bhagavad Gita has 745 verses has been mentioned in the Gitamana verse in the Mahabharata itself.  According to the Gitamana verse 620 verses are attributed to Lord Krishna. The presently available version has only 575 verses of Lord Krishna. Forty five verses of Lord Krishna are missing from the presently available version of the Bhagavad Gita. There are internal evidences  also, which show that certain verses were present in the Original version. All these have been discussed in detail in the book. For example, any keen reader must have observed that the Lord says tin the Bhagavad Gita that he would speak about the Parampada but in the version with 700 verses ,what Lord said on the Parampada is missing. There are quite a few such pointers in the Bhagavad gita, which the scholars seem to have ignored.

One cannot say that the Great Adi Shankaracharya did not know about this fact.  In fact the complete version with 745 verses was treated as an esoteric version and its circulation was confined to close circles which must have included the past Shankaracharyas. Adi Shankaracharya spoke about the difficulty the earlier commentators had in explaining certain seemingly conflicting verses and it is quite possible that he wanted to popularize the Bhagavad Gita with the verses which would be suitable for common consumption. It is also possible that the early acharyas of the Vishistadvaita abd Dvaita schools did not have access to the version with 745 verses and they devoted their time and energy only to contest Adi Shankaracharya's explanations. However there are evidences that some later scholars of the Ramanuja school was aware of some of he rare verses.

Regards,
Sunil KB


On , Sunil Bhattacharjya <sunil_bhattacharjya at yahoo.com> wrote:
 
Namaste friends,

The name of the publisher is :

Parimal Publications

Office : 27 / 28, Shakti Nagar, Delhi - 110007 (India)
Retail Outlet : 22/3, Shakti nagar, Delhi - 110007 (India)

Regards,
Sunil KB
On Tuesday, May 6, 2014 1:21 AM, Neeraj Sukhavasi <neeraj.sukhavasi at gmail.com> wrote:
 
Kindly let me know how I may get a hard copy of this book. I heard a couple of times about missing verses but glad some one had it. You mean this version of gita has more slokas than Jnaneshwari or Shankar Bhashyam.
 
Thanks and Regards
 
Neeraj



On Mon, May 5, 2014 at 7:47 AM, Sunil Bhattacharjya via Advaita-l <advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org> wrote:

Dear friends,
>
>
>
>I am glad to inform you that the book "The Original Bhagavad Gita" of 745 verses (including the rare verses, in conformity with the Gitamana verse of the Mahabharata), with translation and commentary by me will be released in Delhi on the 19th May, 2014, under the auspices of WAVES. This book also has a lengthy introduction dealing with several nagging issues connected with the Bhagavad Gita, which baffled a number of modern scholars and many of them began to doubt even the length of Vulgate version of 700 verses..The invite for the same is attached. 
>
>As regards the book the eminent Indologist, scholar and writer Prof. Klaus Klostermaier, has written his Foreword to the book as follows:
>
>Sunil kumar Bhattacharjya is one of those remarkable Indian scientists who not only keep personally close to their religious heritage but also become religious scholars after their retirement from  their worldly profession. As he writes in his Foreword (Preface) he spent several decades in researching and writing of this volume. His ambition had been to restore a number of lost verses to the Bhagavad gita and to publish the Original Bhagavad Gita in 745 verses, instead of the customary 700. The lengthy introduction goes into the literary history of the Mahabharata and the vicissitudes of the Bhagavad Gita. The various redactions and the scholarly discussions concerning the length of the original Gita. In the process he also reviews the opinion of a number of recognized scholars, who have dealt with this issue. He also answers questions like "How could the discourse on the Bhagavad Gita  be given in the battle-fleld?", by explaining
 the rules of
> ancient Indian warfare.- apparently a much fairer and more chivalrous affair than our modern all-devastating wars.
>
>The main body of the book gives the Sanskrit text in Devanagari and a transliteration that does without diacritics and a very readable English translation. The author / editor has clearly marked the verses that are not contained in the commonly available editions : an invitation to the scholars to study these in particular. Occasionally the author has inserted some commentaries of his own, helping the uninitiated to understand the difficult portions of the text. An alphabetized verse-index concludes the handsome volume.
>
>
>This is a genuine enrichment to the large literature on the Bhagavad Gita and it will certainly arouse the interest of both scholars and General readers.
>
>Regards,
>Sunil KB
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