Paradigm Lost: The Application of the Historical-Critical Method to the Bhagavad Gītā

Who’s Zoomin’ Who? Bhagavadgītā Recensions in India and Germany

“…We would have to choose the readings of one based on intrinsic grounds, and, since the standard assumption in textual criticism is that scribes never consciously omit anything (but may add verses of their own), the presumption must be that the additional verses in K are additions in this recension rather than omissions in the rival recension-a fact both Belvalkar and Edgerton noted. 38 For further examples that this is what the Indologists were really doing most of the time, when they claimed to be engaged in "textual critcism," see Adluri and Bagchee (2014) for examples from Richard Garbe, Hermann Oldenberg, and Georg von Simson; Adluri and Bagchee (2016a) for examples from Jarl Charpentier, Mislav Ježić, and Przemysław Szczurek; and Adluri and Bagchee (2016b [In press]) for examples from Andreas Bigger and Michael Witzel. 39 The simplest way for the fourteen full and four half-verses less y verses not found in V but found in K' (and of which Schrader claimed that all of them are features of their common ancestor O) to have descended to K' from O is if O contained 714 full and four half-verses less y verses.…”

“…54 On the German scholars' need to claim a more illustrious predecessor for their method of "criticism" in Wilhelm von Humboldt, see Adluri and Bagchee (2016a, 285, n. 98). 55 See Adluri and Bagchee (2014, chapter 3), and see also Adluri and Bagchee (2016a). 56 An English-language journal founded in Bombay in 1930 and published by the Theosophy Company.…”

“…63 For an account of these Gītās, see Adluri and Bagchee (2014, chapter 3). Georg von Simsons "Brahmanic Gītā" is also covered in this chapter; for Ježić's "pseudo-German Gītā" (see next line of main text), see Adluri and Bagchee (2016a The latter has its seat in the northern Himālaya (or, north of the Himālaya) in Badarī-vana" (Printz 1929, 257 (7) that 'The name Hamsa Yogi is not the proper name of any specific writer but the title of an office in the organization, filled, from time to time, by one or more of the most learned among the members thereof; these office-holders being charged with the duty of elucidating esoteric teachings contained in the chief Hindu Sacred books'" (259-60). Printz adds: "Finally, regarding the Bhagavadgītā we learn from this protagonist [that is, Sir Subramania] in the foreword to nr.…”

“…In this paper, we reconsider the debate over "recensions" of the Bhagavadgītā in light of recent work on the search for an "original" Gītā (Adluri and Bagchee 2014;Adluri and Bagchee 2016a). F. Otto Schrader in 1930 argued that the "Kashmir recension" of the Bhagavadgītā-reconstructed by him on the basis of an incomplete manuscript in Śāradā characters 1 and a single Gītā commentary, the Sarvatobhadra of Rājanaka Rāmakavi (a. k.…”

Bhagavad Gita and Hindu modes of capitalist accumulation in India

“…Doniger (2013) considers that Gita was composed during ca.100 CE. Adluri and Bagchee (2016) have tried to apply critical historical method to historicise Gita and put it within a historical context, but their research ends up in conforming Bhargava (1977) who argued that “no sober historian” would “concede that the Bhagavad Gita contains the actual words spoken by Krishna to Arjuna on the battlefield of Kurukhetra” (Bhargava, 1977, p. 357). The date of composition of Gita and its mythological history remains as an unresolved debate among scholars.…”