Reading Room

Gita-1-1

Well, I have been trying to find a book that will help me started again with my reading habit. However, I could not find any book where I stay currently. Wait, there is one. Srimad Bhagavad Gita!

Before I start, allow me to pray for the blessings of god Ganesha and Goddess Saraswati as done usually before such attempts. I request everyone to forgive me for any mistakes that I might make in this series of posts and point out the same to me.

Here we go! Gita is a part of Mahabharata. It has 700 verses in 18 chapters. It was spoken by Lord Krishna to Arjuna at the time of Kurukshetra war. Arjuna, who arrives at the scene of war looks around and finds that he needs to fight with his own relatives, friends and teachers to win this war. He then finds it difficult to justify killing his own people for the sake of attaining worldly pleasure.

Krishna then enlightens Arjuna and tells him that why this war need to be fought. This is a war not between friends or relatives, but between sin and virtue. Many Arjunas have fought this in past and many more will fight this in future. It is your duty. Do not run away from that. Because, if you do not do it today, tomorrow you will be forced to do it for sure. Somehow, if you restrain from doing it, you can't even save yourself.

The first chapter starts with the words of Dhritarashtra. He is the father of Kauravas (the villains of Mahabharata). He being a blind man, the great sage Vyasa had given special abilities for one of his close servant, Sanjaya to see the war and report to him from the palace itself. We see the entire Bharatha war through the eyes of Sanjaya.

When it was the time for the war to begin, Dhritarashtra asked Sanjaya...

"Oh Sanjaya, what did my war hungry sons and the sons of Pandu do after assembling at the sacred land of Kurukshetra?"

The above is the first versa of Gita. That is the only place we will hear Dhritarashtra in Gita. As an answer to this question, Sanjaya starts narrating the incidents at battle field. More on it in the next post.

Labels: Arjuna, Gita, Krishna, Mahabharata

posted by Sarin @ 9:33 AM