378 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
obvious. Often it is expounded without any question by Arjuna and whenever it has been propounded in answer to a question that question has nothing to do with the war. This shows that the philosophic parts of the Bhagvat Gita are not parts of the original Gita but have been added later on and in order to find a place for them, new, appropriate and leading questions have been put in the mouth of Arjuna which have nothing to do with the mundane problems of war.
(iv) The third patch on the oriinal Bhagvat Gita consists of verses in which Krishna is elevated from the position of Ishwara to that of Parmeshwara. This patch can be easily detected as being chapters X and XV where Krishna says:
(Quotation not mentioned) ……..
As I said, to go in for a precise date for the composition of the Bhagvat Gita is to go on a fool’s errand and that if an attempt in that direction is to be of any value, effort must be directed to determine the date of each patch separately. Proceeding in this way it is possible that what I have called the original unphilosophic Bhagvat Gita was part of the first edition of the Mahabharata called Jaya. The first patch on the original Bhagvat Gita in which Krishna is depicted as Ishvara must be placed in point of date sometimes later than Megasthenes when Krishna was only a tribal God, [1] How much later it is not possible to say. But it must be considerably later. For it must be remembered that the Brahmins were not friendly to Krishnaism in the beginning. In fact they were opposed to it. [2] It must have taken some time before the Brahmins could have become reconciled to Krishna worship. [3]
The second patch on the original Bhagvat Gita having reference to Sankhya and Vedanta must for reason already given be placed later than the Sutras of Jaimini and Badarayana. The question of the date of these Sutras has carefully been examined by Prof. Jacobi [4] . His conclusion is that these Sutras were composed sometime between 200 and 450 A.D.
The third patch on the original Bhagvat Gita in which Krishna is raised into Parmeshvara must be placed during the reign of the Gupta Kings. The reason is obvious. Gupta kings made Krishna-Vasudev their family deity as their opponents the Shaka kings had made
1 Dr. Bhandarkar in his ‘Saivism and Vaishnavism’ says, “If the Vasudeva Krishna worship prevailed in the time of the first Maurya it must have originated long before the establishment of the Maurya dynasty.” This is an unexceptionable statement. But it seems to me that a distinction must be made between Krishna as a tribal God and Krishna as an universalized Ishwara. The date for the first may be what Dr. Bhandarkar suggests but the same cannot be the date for the second. In the Gita we are concerned with the second.
2 See Shamshastri Memorial Volume.
3 The opposition to Krishnaism has been expressed by so late a person as Shankaracharya.
4 The dates of the Philosophical Sutras or the Brahmans—in the journal of the American Oriental Society—Vol. XXXI 1911.