The Bhagavad-gita is one of the most important works of religious literature in the world, ranking with the Bible, Koran, and Torah as the most referenced theological volumes in history. The gita is one chapter out of a massive Indian text called the Mahabharata, often called the "Great Epic" by historians because it is the longest single coherent text surviving in the history of the world. At over 100,000 verses, and over two million words, it's between seven and ten times longer than the Iliad and Odyssey combined.
The Gita is from a genre of Indian literature known as itihasa, translated loosely as "history," though its more direct translation based on the words it's made up of in Sanskrit is, "so it happened in the past." The epic was passed down through oral tradition for hundreds or thousands of years, depending on who you talk to (the rhythm of its verses in Sanskrit make it easy to memorize, which would have helped to defeat inaccurate retellings). Veda Vyasa, who is considered to be an avatar of Vishnu himself, is credited with first writing the Mahabharata.
This narrative and the Vedas, four books that outline the practices and beliefs of many who Europeans lumped into the generalized term "Hindu," paint a sophisticated picture of the structure of the universe. From this perspective, time runs in cycles, or yugas (the timeframe of which is a little different depending on who you ask). There are four yugas in the cycle of the universe; when they have run their course, the cycle begins again. At each successive yuga, humanity and the very nature of the world degrades a bit, both physically and spiritually. A Hindu, for example, who ascribes to the idea of yugas might suggest that the reason Abraham or Adam lived as long as they did was because they lived in the prior yuga. The Mahabharata takes place at the end of the Dvarpa yuga, the second-to-last in the cycle. The 18 Days' war that Arjuna is anguished about at the beginning of the Gita actually marked the end of that yuga and the beginning of the cycle we're living in now--the Kali yuga.
The Mahabharata, and by extension, the Bhagavad-gita, can be understood on three levels. The first is the Earthly adventure story of the rightful rulers, the Pandavas, who are usurped from their leadership by the mechanations of their cousin, Duryodhana.
Which leads to the second way the Great Epic can be perceived: on a cosmic level. The narrative illustrates an intergalactic battle that's played out across the universe between Krishna and his avatars and chaos; between good and evil. At this level, Earth's conflicts are merely a symptom of a greater conflict. The demons strike first, descending to Earth to control it as a way to upset the balance in the universe, taking bodies of princes and animals to strategically leverage the principles of dharma to corrupt and destroy the good allies of the suras, the "good guys," to gain power (we'll talk a little more about dharma in another post).
Duryodhana is one of these asuras (demons). He's born into the royal family of the Kurus. His father, Dhritarashtra, was the firstborn in the family, but he was born blind. And at the time, the king's responsibility to his people
Lastly, and most intimately, this battle plays out on a spiritual level. To emphasize the importance of this layer of the narrative, the Gita is at its heart (in the sixth of the eighteen chapters). As Krishna mentions in the Gita, the spiritual component of the Mahabharata transcends the universe, time, and space. In this view of the narrative, the battlefield that Krishna and Arjuna stand upon at the beginning of the Gita is the battle for the soul--it's the daily battle we all face to both live our material lives and also transcend it and touch something greater than ourselves--something that Krishna says we were literally created to pursue and attain.
To those of us functioning in this world that is still feeling the results of this massive war that took place at the end of the last great age, thousands of years before we were even conceived, this is where the Gita and the Mahabharata take on the most relevance. We can engage ourselves with the amazing stories of these great souls, but ultimately, we exist to fulfill our own potential, and learning what that is and how to achieve it is information that can literally change the world for us.
