LITERATURE OF BRAHMINISM 245
born in 788 A.D. and who died in 820 A.D. —wrote his commentary on the Bhagwat Gita, it was an unknown composition. It was certainly not mentioned in the Tatvasangraha by Shantarakshit who wrote his treatise only 50 years before the advent of Sankaracharya. His second reason is this. Vasubandhu was the originator of a school of thought known as ‘ Vijnan Vad’. The Brahma-Sutra-Bhashya contains a criticism of the Vijnan Vad of Vasubandhu. The Gita contains a reference [1] to the Brahma-Sutra-Bhashya. The Gita must therefore be after Vasubandhu and after the Brahma-Sutra-Bhashya. Vasubandhu was the preceptor of the Gupta King Baladitya. That being so the Bhagwat Gita must have been composed or at any rate portions of Gita must have been added to the original edition during or after the reign of Baladitya i.e. about 467 A.D.
While there is a difference of opinion regarding the date of the composition of the Bhagwat Gita, there is no difference of opinion that the Bhagwat Gita has gone through many editions. All share the conviction that the Bhagwat Gita has not reached us in its original form but has undergone essential transformations at the hands of different editors who have added to it from time to time. It is equally clear that the editors through whose hands it has gone were not of equal calibre. As Prof. Garbe points out [2]
“The Gita is certainly ‘ no artistic work which the all comprehending vision of a genious has created.’ The play of inspiration is indeed often times perceptible; not seldom, however, there are merely high-sounding, empty words with which an idea that has been already quite often explained, is repeated; and occasionally the literary expression is exceedingly faulty. Verses are bodily taken over from the Upanishad literature, and this is certainly what a poet filled with inspiration would never have done. The workings of Sattva, Rajas and Tamas are systematized with a truly Indian pedantry, and much indeed besides this could be brought forward to prove that the Gita is not the product of a genuinely poetic creative impulse...”
Hopkins speaks of the Bhagwat Gita as characteristic in its sublimity as in its puerilities, in its logic as in its want of it….Despite its occasional power and mystic exaltation, the Divine Song in its present state as a poetical production is unsatisfactory. The same thing is said over and over again, and the contradictions in phraseology and meaning are as numerous as the repetitions, so that one is not surprised to find it described as “the wonderful song, which causes the hair to stand on end”.
1 Gita Adhayaya XIII, Shloka, 4.
2 Ibid p. 3.