Gita ( Hinduism)

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nflict between the Pandavas and the Kauravas brewed gradually when the Kauravas refused to return the kingdom to the Panadavas and honor the agreement after the fourteen-year exile, and escalated to a full scale war when the Kauravas refused to even grant Yudhisthir's reduced demand for a few villages instead of the entire kingdom. As the battle is about to begin, Arjuna, himself an acclaimed warrior, wonders how he could kill his own blood relatives with whom he had grown up as a child. He puts the battle on hold and begins a conversation with Krishna, one of the ten but most important incarnations of the Universa!
l Hindu God, Vishnu. The Bhagavad Gita begins here and ends with Krishna convincing Arjuna that in the grand scheme of things, he is only a pawn. The best he could do is do his duty and not question God's will. It was his duty to fight. In convincing Arjuna, the Lord Krishna provides a philosophy of life and restores Arjuna's nerve to begin the battle -- a battle that had been stalled because the protagonist had lost his nerve and needed time to reexamine his moral values.


Even though The Bhagavad Gita (hereafter referred to as the Gita) is one of the three principal texts that define the essence of Hinduism, and since all over the world Hindus chant from the Gita during most of their religious ceremonies, strictly speaking the Gita is not one of the Hindu scriptures. In light of its inseparable links to one of the two great Hindu epics (Mahabharata and Ramayana) which most Indians hold very dear to their hearts, and because Krishna, the most venerated and popular of the incarnations of Lord Vishnu, figures so prominently in it, the Gita over the years has not only become very popular but has ascended to spiritual heights that are afforded only to the Vedas (and the subsequent reinterpretive philosophies that followed them) and the Upanishads in the ancient Indian literature. The concept and symbol of God were extremel...