The Bhagavad-Gita is an ancient masterpiece of India. It focuses only on one part of a larger whole wherein the God-man Krishna lectures Prince Arjuna on the righteousness of the battle that he is to take part in. The battle pitted his former friends and teachers against him and they were on the opposing side for various reasons. Krishna offers his godly wisdom and sage advice in this matter, telling Arjuna that it is correct to fight since that is his duty given the caste that he was born into.

As I mentioned, the Bhagavad-Gita is a part of a longer work called the Mahabharata, composed beyond the mists of time. It is ostensibly based upon a true series of events, namely the Bharata War. In that sense, it is similar to The Iliad and The Odyssey, which was formulated so long ago that it is attributed to someone that may have not existed. I am pretty sure that people argue about the existence of Homer, but I don’t know if they do the same for Vyasa, the guy that wrote the Mahabharata. According to Wikipedia Vyasa has reached mythological status, so I suppose it is somewhat the same.

Going into this book, I was only familiar with the quote that J. Robert Oppenheimer said when the first Atomic Bomb was set off in Los Alamos back in 1945; “If the radiance of a thousand suns / were to burst into the sky / that would be like / the splendor of the Mighty One and I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds.” This is only because I played a lot of Civilization IV back in the day.

This book exceeded my expectations. When I got it, I didn’t realize that it would have the original Sanskrit Text, a Romanized transliteration, and a translation to English. This made the book seem longer than it actually is. Along with all of that are a number of references in order to put the work in context and to discuss things like how to read Sanskrit. A full table is devoted to each letter of the alphabet and how to pronounce it. The book also contains essays to further explain the historical and cultural context of this work.

I haven’t read any of the other translations of this and I can’t read Sanskrit, so I am unable to determine how accurate the book is to the original piece. However, I did have a lot of things that I liked about it. There are some things that I skimmed over, to be sure, but this is mainly because I am not really trying to learn Sanskrit. I think this book would be a fantastic resource for scholars but I am sure they probably have their own books that they are fans of. ( )