The Bhagavad-Gītā: A Critical Introduction ed. by Ithamar Theodor

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Bhagavad-Gītā: A Critical Introduction ed. by Ithamar Theodor Keya Maitra (bio) The Bhagavad-Gītā: A Critical Introduction. Edited by Ithamar Theodor. London: Routledge, 2020. Pp. xix+ 172. Paper $39.16, ISBN 978-0-367556-37-2. Bhagavad-gītā: A Critical Introduction is a collection of ten original chapters authored by nine scholars of the Gītā. While no single theme runs through all the chapters, they all revolve around the hermeneutics of the Gītā, especially in the exegetical and commentarial traditions. The first three chapters focus on the questions of structure of the text, both in terms of its organizational form and the coherence of its content. Chapters 4 through 6 focus on the Gītā's commentarial and exegetical history especially within the Vaiṣṇava tradition. Chapters 7 through 9 focus on the socio-religious and cultural impacts of the Gītā that expand the scope of its influences. Finally, chapter 10 brings the focus back to structure by its innovative proposal that the epithet "Acyuta" which Arjuna uses to refer to Kṛṣṇa at three critical junctures of the text functions to frame the structure of Arjuna's journey in the Gītā. In the process of delineating these themes, novel metaphors are introduced, longstanding scholarly conjectures are challenged, and refreshing framings are proposed. Ithamar Theodor, the editor of the volume as well as the author of the first two chapters, identifies "the discussion of the Gītā's structure" as the central theme of the opening chapters (p. xiii). He uses his metaphor of a "three-story house" to capture what he takes to be the Gītā's "three-tier concept of reality intertwined with a transformational ethical ladder" (p. 17). While the lower floor of Theodor's three-story house contains the human life of our everyday experience, the intermediary second floor supports one's efforts to relinquish worldly life to seek the state of liberation. And the topmost third floor "represents full absorption in the liberated state" (p. 18). Further, Theodor imagines this house to feature a ladder guiding its residents from the first floor to the second, and from the second to the third, thus capturing his hermeneutical quest for simplicity, coherence, and consistency in the Gītā. Theodor uses the imagery of a ladder's structure not only to describe the Gītā's textual organization but also the structure of some of its central concepts such as the three yogas and guṇas. As he writes, "The Bhagavad-gītā suggests a gradual elevation, by which one raises oneself from a lower guṇa to a higher [End Page 1] one…when one adheres to dharma by being motivated by some ulterior motives, one is considered to be governed by the two lower guṇas, but when one is able to rise to the guṇa of goodness, one practices following dharma for its own sake, in a disinterested manner, with no desire for its fruit" (p. 9). I find this use of the ladder structure in the context of guṇas problematic. Following the Gītā's conceptual scheme, we might take the guṇas to constitute everything and, further, to constitute the nature of a person such that their caste assignment determines the appropriateness of certain duties. Then the way one performs one's duties--i.e., whether "being motivated by some ulterior motives" (p. 9), or for the sake of the dharma--cannot be a matter of climbing the ladder of the guṇas. Offering an account of the uninterrupted significance of the Gītā for the Hindu philosophical and religious traditions by engaging with its exegetical history, Sharma's "Bhagavad-gītā: Its Philosophy and Interpretation" argues against two diachronic perceptions popular in the Gītā scholarship. First is the interpretation of the Bhagavad-gītā as a "source text of jñāna-yoga (through Śaṅkara in ancient India), of bhakti-yoga (through Rāmānuja in medieval India) and finally of karma-yoga (through B.G. Tilak in modern India)" as succeeding each other diachronically (p. 41). This is a popular...