LITERATURE OF BRAHMINISM 265
IX. 17. I am the Father of this world, the Mother, the Sustainer, the Grandfather; the Purifier, the (one) thing to be known, (the syllable) Om, and also the Rik Saman and Yajus.
IX.22. Persons who, meditating on Me as non-separate, worship Me in all beings, to them thus ever jealously engaged, I carry what they lack and preserve what they already have.
There are two other features of the Bhagwat Gita which arrests one’s attention.
(i) There is a sentiment of depreciation of the Vedas and Vedic rituals and sacrifices.
II.42-44. O Partha, no set determination is formed in the minds of those that are deeply attached to pleasure and power, and whose disctimination is stolen away by the flowery words of the unwise, who are full of desires and look upon heaven as their highest goal and who, taking pleasure in the panegyric words of the Vedas, declare that there is nothing else. Their (flowery) words are exuberant with various specific rites as the means to pleasure and power and are the causes of (new) births as the result of their works (performed with desire).
II.45 The Vedas deal with the three Gunas, Be thou free, O Arjun, from the triad of the Gunas, free from the apirs of opposites, ever balanced, free from (the thought of) getting and keeping, and established in the Self.
II.46. To the Brahmana who has known the Self, all the Vedas are of so much use, as a reservoir is, when there is a flood everywhere.
IX.21. Having enjoyed the vast Swarga-world, they enter the mortal world, on the exhaustion of their merit; Thus, abiding by the injunctions of the three (Vedas), desiring desires, they (constantly) come and go.
INCOMPLETE
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