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INTRODUCTION TO ANUGITA
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The Bhagavad Gita, usually considered part of the sixth book of the Mahabharata (dating from about 400 or 300 B.C.), is a central text of Hinduism, a philosphical dialog between the god Krishna and the warrior Arjuna. This is one of the most popular and accessible of all Hindu scriptures, required reading for anyone interested in Hinduism. The Gita discusses selflessness, duty, devotion, and meditation, integrating many different threads of Hindu philosophy.
Like the Bhagavadgita and the Sanatsugatiya, the Anugita, is one of the numerous episodes of the Mahabharata. And like the Sanatsugatiya, it appears here for the first time in an English, or, indeed, it is believed, in any European garb. It forms part of the Asvamedha Parvan of the Mahabharata, and is contained in thirty-six chapters of that Parvan. These chapters--being chapters XVI to LI--together with all the subsequent chapters of the Asvamedha Parvan, form by themselves what in some of our copies is called the Anugita Parvan-a title which affords a parallel to the title Bhagavadgita Parvan, which we have already referred to. The Anugita is not now a work of any very great or extensive reputation. But we do find some few quotations from it in the Bhashyas of Sankarakarya, and one or two in the Sankhya-sara of Vignana Bhikshu, to which reference will be made hereafter. And it is included in the present volume, partly because it affords an interesting, glimpse of sundry old passages of the Upanishad literature in a somewhat modified, and presumably later, form; and partly, perhaps I may say more especially, because it professes to be a sort of continuation, or rather recapitulation, of the Bhagavadgita. At the very outset of the work, we read, that, after the great fratricidal war of the Mahabharata was over, and the Pandavas had become sole and complete masters of their ancestral kingdom, Krishna and Arguna--the two interlocutors in the Bhagavadgita--happened to take a stroll together in the great magical palace built for the Pandavas by the demon Maya. In the course of the conversation which they held on the occasion, Krishna communicated to Arguna his wish to return to his own people at Dvaraka, now that the business which had called him away from them was happily terminated. Arguna, of course, was unable to resist the execution of this wish; but he requested Krishna, before leaving for Dvaraka, to repeat the instruction which had been already conveyed to him on 'the holy field of Kurukshetra,' but which had gone out of his 'degenerate mind.' Krishna thereupon protests that he is not equal to a verbatim recapitulation of the Bhagavadgita, but agrees, in lieu of that, to impart to Arguna the same instruction in other words, through the medium of a certain 'ancient story'--or puratana itihasa. And the instruction thus conveyed constitutes what is called the Anugita, a name which is in itself an embodiment of this anecdote.
Now the first question which challenges investigation with reference to this work is, if we may so call it, the fundamental one-how much is properly included under the name? The question is not one quite easy of settlement, as our authorities upon it are not all reconcilable with one another. In the general list of contents of the Asvamedha Parvan, which is given at the end of that Parvan in the edition printed at Bombay, we read that the first section is the Vyasa Vakya, the second the Samvartamaruttiya. With neither of these have we aught to do here. The list then goes on thus: 'Anugita, Vasudevagamana, Brahmana Gita, Gurusishyasamvada, Uttankopakhyana,' and so forth. With the later sections, again, we arc not here concerned. Now let us compare this list with the list which may be obtained from the titles of the chapters in the body of the work itself. With the sixteenth chapter, then, of the Asvamedha Parvan, begins what is here called the Anugita Parvan; and that chapter and the three following chapters are described as the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth chapters respectively of the Anugita Parvan, which forms part of the Asvamedha Parvan.
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