The Bhagavad Gita : Arjuna's Spiritual Journey with Krishna, The Teacher

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

The Blessed Lord's teachings in the Gita involving the fallacies of transience and eternalism of life are exceedingly profound. One journeying in the uncharted waters of Vedic philosophy may encounter the challenges of terseness in few Shlokas and inscrutability in some others. It is said that ten per cent of the 700 Shlokas are quite difficult to translate as their meanings are not quite transparent. .

Metaphysical ideas, like concepts of Self, Sacrifice, Sansaravrksa (world tree) and any other posited reality which cannot be reached through objective studies of material reality are obviously beyond human sense perception. The book is especially for those readers of the English language who wish to understand these and other basic tenets of Hinduism. The Gita having a unique pan-Hindu influence, the book is equally relevant to all devotees of Lord Krishna and His spiritual teachings. .

Efforts have been made to simplify and make translation of these verses a little more intelligible by adding appropriate, equivalent, and parallel words, phrases, and idioms. But the true realisation of these concepts can only be achieved by constant practice in conjunction with Yoga and Meditation.

Bidyut Kumar Chandra (born 1942), a post-graduate in public health engineering studied Planning in Project Planning Centre of Bradford University. He joined the Odisha Government in the year 1964 and retired from the position of Chief Engineer (Public Health) in 2000.

Once he demitted the office, he devoted his time to travelling, reading, and visiting historically important places for an immersive experience to unwound the accumulated monotony. Besides, he visited traditional and ISKCON temples here and abroad to offer obeisance in solitude.

Back home, he wrote two books on cricket: "The Siege of Indian Cricket (2000- 2008)' was published in 2009, but the publishing of his second book 'Purusha and Prakriti of Indian Cricket: sattva, rajas and tamas' was adjourned in favour of the author's present work of translation of the Bhagavad Gita.

The author acknowledges the Copyright of all the original works quoted or extracted in his work of translation of the Bhagavad Gita.

Though I was introduced and exposed to the Gita quite early, I had a feeling of inadequacy while editing my second book: "Purusha and Prakriti of Indian Cricket: sattva, rajas and tamas. After dwelling on the perplexity of this problem in various ways over a period of time, while continuing the reading of the Gita, and assimilating the knowledge and wisdom from the teachings of the Lord in the new light, hopefully, I could identify two of the adversaries in this endeavour, already talked about by the Blessed Lord in the Gita, the inability to concentrate due to the fickleness of mind (shloka 12.08) and lack of constant practice (shloka 12.09). The Lord had earlier told Arjuna that 'for whatsoever [reason] the restless and unsteady mind wanders away, from every such [reason] let him rein it in, to restore it under the direct control of the Self (shloka 6.26).

I never knew when and how it worked as my idea of editing the book receded in the background, and slowly, gradually and progressively, the arduous but welcome thought of translating the Bhagavad Gita came into being and became more and more pronounced and passionate with the passage of time during the last decade. At this point, I started reading books on the Bhagavad Gita by other authors and authorities that helped me widen my vision and enhance my understanding of the Thoughts of the Gita, much of which hitherto was beyond my comprehension.

Mine is essentially a journey of a translator in the uncharted waters of Vedic philosophy through the 700-verse Upanishad in pursuit of the above goal. Enraptured and enthralled by the soul of wisdom in every verse the Lord uttered, enwrapped in lyrical grace, I felt blessed as well, but scared at times by the challenges of its terseness in a few verses and by the inscrutability of some others. The culmination of this divine experience and realisation took long years to result in what, by and large, may be termed as a pure and literal translation of the Bhagavad Gita in thought and spirit, but I am no more vain or anxious about the results of my efforts.

How many times Bhagavad-Gita has been translated? In English itself there must be at least a hundred translations. Any such translator has the obvious challenge before him to simplify the terse undercurrent of vedantic meaning in the text and make it succinct and readable even to a beginner who may have never gone through the Gita or ever listened to Gita-expositions. This is exactly the challenge this translator Shri Bidyut Kumar Chandra has been able to negotiate successfully. His translation is straight to the point. It is therefore most suitable and readable for a beginner who contacts the Gita for the first time. Our translator is not at all perplexed or confused in the umpteen (around 70) shlokas where the flow of the text of the Gita shows you a jerk in your thought-process which makes any reader halt at that point and collect, mostly revise, his ideas. The high point of this book is this flow of the English translation which moves on mellifluously as if there are no such terse or inscrutable shlokas in the Gita, though the author's masterly introduction makes definite reference to a good number of such shlokas.

Another remarkable thing of this translator must be applauded. Usually, translators of Sanskrit books into English do not spend the necessary time to go through other translations of the same text. Sri Bidyut Kumar Chandra is unique in this respect. His Introduction testifies to his having looked at almost all (literally, all) existing translations of the Gita. That is probably what must have cleared his doubts, if there had been any, and contributes to the easy flow of his translation without any necessity for further explanations.