KRISHNA AND HIS GITA 359
could indicate higher esteem. Yet in stanza 46 of chapter VI, we have it laid down, that the devotee is superior not only to the mere performer of penances, but even to the men of knowledge. The commentators betray their gnostic bias by interpreting ‘men of knowledge’ in this latter passage to mean those who have acquired erudition in the Shastras and their significations. This is not an interpretation to be necessarily rejected. But there is in it a certain twisting of words, which, under the circumstances here, I am not inclined to accept. And on the other hand, it must not be forgotten, that the implications fairly derivable from Chapter IV, stanza 39 (pp. 62, 63), would seem to be rather than knowledge is superior to devotion—is the higher stage to be reached by means of devotion as the stepping stone. In another passage again at Gita, Chapter XII, stanza 12, concentration is preferred to knowledge, which also seems to me to be irreconcileable with Chapter VII, stanza 16. Take still another instance. At Gita, Chapter B stanza 15, it is said, that ‘Lord receives the sin or merit of none.’ Yet at Chapter V, stanza
24 Krishna calls himself ‘the Lord and enjoyer,’ of all sacrifices and penances. How, it may be well asked, can the Supreme Being ‘enjoy that which he does not even receive?’ Once more at Chapter X, stanza 29, Krishna declares that’ none is hateful to me, none dear.’ And yet the remarkable verse at the close of Chapter XII seem to stand in pointblank contradiction to that declaration. There through a most elaborate series of stanzas, the burden of Krishna’s eloquent sermon is ‘such a one is dear to me.’ And again in those fine verses, where Krishna winds up his Divine Law, he similarly tells Arjuna, that he, Arjuna, is ‘dear’ to Krishna. And Krishna also speaks of that devotee as ‘dear’ to him, who may publish the mystery of the Gita among those who references Supreme Being. [1] And yet again, how are we to reconcile the same passage about none being ‘hateful or dear’ to Krishna, with his own words at Chapter XVI, stanza 18 and following stanzas? The language used in describing the ‘demoniac’ people there mentioned is not remarkable for sweetness towards them, while Krishna says positively, ‘I hurl down such people into demoniac wombs, whereby they go down into misery and the vilest condition.’ These persons are scarcely characterized with accuracy ‘as neither hateful nor dear’ to Krishna. It seems to me, that all these are real inconsistencies in the Gita, not such, perhaps, as might not be explained away, but such, I think, as indicate a mind making guesses at truth, as Professor Max Muller puts it, rather than a mind elaborating a complete and organized
1 And see, too, Chapter VII, stanza 17, where the man of knowledge is declared to be ‘dear’ to Krishna.