The Vedas, which literally means knowledge, refer to the four collections that Hindus consider major religious texts. These collections are known as the Rig Veda, the Yajur Veda, Sama Veda and Atharva Veda.Modern Hinduism is derived from the four Vedas. But over a period of thousands of years other incarnations of God have appeared to our ancient Hindu ancestors. They have left important messages that are today very familiar to Hindus and students of Hinduism across the world.
One such "Avatar" or manifestation of God that has become quite popular worldwide, is the Lord Krishna. Hindus travelling to India ensure that they visit Krishna's birth place at Vrindaban, in Mathura. His messages are contained in the Bhagavad Gita, which forms part of the war of the Mahabharata.
In the battlefield discussion between Lord Krishna and Arjuna, Krishna revealed himself to be the Supreme God. And in recent times the Gita has been studied and commented upon more than ever because of the high political profile given to it by the newly elected Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi.
This classical/religious work of India is now an item of high-level diplomatic exchange on the world's stage. Narendra Modi has presented translations of the Bhagavad Gita to the Chinese President Xi Jinping and to the Japanese Emperor Akihito.Then in September last year, Modi brought a special edition of the "Bhagavad Gita according to Gandhi," covered in homespun khadi (home-spun cloth), to the United States, and gave it to President Obama at a White House dinner.
But Modi himself returned to India with a special Gita given to him by an American. During his visit, Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, the first practising Hindu in the United States Congress, gave to Modi her personal copy of the Gita. This was the same copy, she noted, that she kept with her when serving as a soldier in Iraq, and on which she had taken her Congressional oath of office in 2013.
The Gita has made impact across the world and across different disciplines. Business Week magazine said that the Bhagavad Gita is the favoured text in the US for ideas about leadership. Sessions on corporate learnings from Bhagavad Gita have been conducted for members of the Young Presidents' Organization, at the Wharton School.
Mustafa Bulent Ecevit, the four-times Turkish Prime Minister, was asked what had given him the courage to send Turkish troops to Cyprus. He answered that he was fortified by the Bhagavad Gita, which taught that if one were morally right, one need not hesitate to fight injustice. (The Telegraph).
Among all leaders of the Indian independence movement, none were more devoted to the Bhagavad Gita than Mahatma Gandhi. He called it his "dictionary of daily reference" and his "mother." He spoke and wrote widely on it throughout his career. But he also had an interpretive problem.
In the course of the Gita, Krishna persuades the reluctant warrior Arjuna to take part in battle at Kurushastra. He advocates violent warfare as an instrument of divine will. Many Indian nationalists accepted the call of the Gita for righteous struggle against the British colonial masters, even if that might require violence.
Gandhi argued, however, that the battlefield must be taken as an interior one, where the forces of good and evil are locked in never-ending struggle. When Krishna tells Arjuna to fight, he is telling him to overcome any self-interested inclinations and to carry out his own righteous duty. Gandhi also claimed that the Gita was not a Hindu work, but rather one of "pure ethics," which a person of any faith can read.
Some of the finest brains in the world have written about the Gita.
�2 "When I read the Bhagavad Gita and reflect about how God created the universe, everything else seems so superfluous"–Albert Einstein
�2 "The Bhagavad Gita has a profound influence on the spirit of mankind by its devotion to God which is manifested by actions"–Dr Albert Schweitzer
�2 "The Bhagavad Gita is the most systematic statement of spiritual evolution of endowing value to mankind. It is one of the most clear and comprehensive summaries of perennial philosophy ever revealed; hence its enduring value is subject not only to India, but to all of humanity"–Aldous Huxley
�2 "In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagavad Gita, in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seems puny and trivial"–Henry David Thoreau
�2 "The marvel of the Bhagavad Gita is its truly beautiful revelation of life's wisdom which enables philosophy to blossom"–Herman Hesse
�2 "The Bhagavad Gita is an empire of thought and in its philosophical teachings Krishna has all the attributes of the full-fledged monotheistic deity and at the same time the attributes of the Upanisadic absolute"–Ralph Waldo Emerson
�2 "In order to approach a creation as sublime as the Bhagavad Gita with full understanding, it is necessary to attune our soul to it"–Rudolph Steiner