[Advaita-l] Gita and westerners comments

[Dinesh Patel MD]

Thank you Praveenji and others
The translation from Sanskrit and the translator are not giving true justice to what Lord Krishna explains to grief stricken Arjun
Can I request you and others in terms of recommendations of books on 
Gita 
Different authors
English 
Or series of discussions on each chapter 
Thank you again
Dinesh

Sent from my iPhone

> On Nov 29, 2016, at 6:25 PM, Praveen R. Bhat <bhatpraveen at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Namaste Dineshji,
> 
> Since the Professor taught Sanskrit at many Universities, including BHU, maybe he was linguistic scholar, but sorry to say, thats all he was. I know English very well, but I hardly have any say over all books written in English. Being a linguistic scholar, his opinion in scriptural works, where he has no expertise, is irrelevant. This is precisely why it is said that even if a scholar, one should not study the scriptures on his own. It will appear contradictory and one could lose whatever little shraddhA one has. 
> 
> People may say that Bhagavan made Arjuna fight a war which Arjuna himself was unwilling to fight, especially where in the former says: "fight" in 2.18. This seems like an order to them, because they read some translation or Sanskrit grammar which may say its a vidhi. However, it is not, as Bhashyakara explains. Bhagavan is just removing the obstacle in the form wrong thinking to Arjuna's dharma as a kShatriya. Gita is a mokShashAstra and any shloka has to be understood in the context. Giving up one's dharma is not conducive to spiritual growth. The sampradAya, teaching tradition, exists for this very reason as to teach the person willing and fit to learn.
> 
> Moreover, what kind of dharma would there have been if Kauravas had ruled, instead of Pandus?! The war was also the greater good *in the long run*. That is why Mahabharata is called a dhArmika war and was dharmakArya for Arjuna. That said, the the Prof has it all wrong as is clear from his statement "The Gita is hampered by the fact that it is supposed to justify Arjuna's preparation in war... and the author seems to have it in the back of his head a large part of the time", which makes one wonder if the Prof read  Bhagavan's final address to Arjuna in 18.63 so: "yathA ichChasi tathA kuru", since being a Sanskrit scholar, he couldn't have not understood it! :)
> 
> shrIkRShNArpaNamastu,
> --Praveen R. Bhat
> /* Through what should one know That owing to which all this is known! [Br.Up. 4.5.15] */
> 
>> On Mon, Nov 28, 2016 at 9:25 AM, Dinesh Patel MD via Advaita-l <advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Franklin Edgerton - (July 24, 1885 – December 7, 1963) was an American linguistic scholar. He was Salisbury Professor of Sanskrit and Comparative Philology at Yale University (1926) and at Benares Hindu University (1953–4). Between 1913 and 1926, he was the Professor of Sanskrit at the University of Pennsylvania. published as volume 38-39 of the Harvard Oriental Series in 1944.