Did the Gita originally have 745 verses?
Thank you very much. Question. Did the Bhagavad Gita originally have 745 verses instead of the current 700? Answer.
No, not at all. The most widely used version of the Gita is what was commented by Shankaracharya almost 1500 years ago and his Gita commentary has 700 verses and he himself mentions in the Gita commentary that Upanibandhanam, that this is a part of the Mahabharata, just 700 verses. So, it is now, although the Bhagavad Gita has been widely read, discussed, debated, commented but there are very very few textual variations among the various recensions of the Gita that are available.
So, Ramanacharya, Madhavacharya, Baldevidya Bhushan, Jayateertha, all of them comment on the Gita and that Gita is same as the Gita that is used by Shankaracharya. So, in general these serious commentators on the Gita they often deal with some text critical issues and if there are some variations in some readings of the Gita, for example, somewhere instead of O, there might be A. So, then they compile it all at the beginning and put it in one place. So, from the time of Shankaracharya to the time of say Jayateertha, who is a prominent Acharya in the Madhva Sampradaya, he doesn't mention more than a dozen small minor variations.
So, this is extreme stability of scripture over time considering the manuscript tradition that was there in India. So, where books were not printed, but books were handwritten and often manuscripts didn't stay for long. So, the point is that leave alone adding 45 verses or deleting 45 verses, even minor variations are in a very insignificant quantity and they are mostly inconsequential in changing in affecting the meaning in any way.
So, then, so definitely the Bhagavad Gita has 700 verses and that has not changed. So, where did the idea that the Gita has 745 verses come from? So, there is a commentator, Keshav Kashmiri in the Vallabha Sanskrit tradition, who says in his commentary that there are 745 verses in the Bhagavad Gita, but then curiously after mentioning this in his commentary on the Gita, he actually comments only on the 700 verses. So, that is called the Valgate tradition of the Gita.
The Valgate is the version of the Gita that is widely used, popularly used as a technical word, Valgate for it. So, apart from him, there are some Kashmiri commentators in the Gita. There is a Ramakanta, there is Anandvardhan and there is Abhinavgupta and they comment on a version of the Gita that has 745 verses.
So, again coming to this point, there is no original version of the Gita which has 745 verses. There are only these three commentators in the Gita who have commented on 745 verses. Now, where they got the 745 verses? That is debatable and its authenticity is questionable because the Bhagavad Gita is a widely read book and none of the other commentators on the Gita or even those who have discussed the Gita anywhere talk about 745 verses in the Gita.
So, they talk about 700 verses as the standard count. Now, significantly even among these three commentators, the exact composition even among these three commentators, 745 verses as I said and Keshav Kashmi claimed there are 745 verses in this commentary or 745 verses in the Gita but the distribution of the verses between them means how many verses Krishna spoke, how many Dhritarashtra spoke, these are different. So, the number that Keshav Kashmi assigns to the number of verses spoken by Dhritarashtra is different from the number of verses that that Ramakant assigns to Dhritarashtra.
So, there is confusion among them itself and in contrast with that, there is no such confusion in the commentary in the Gita that is given by Shankaracharya, Ramacharya, Madhacharya, Baldevidya Bhushan, Vishnacharya Thakur and others, prominent Acharyas in the Bhagavad Gita. So, now further so that means there is the influence that we can make is somehow there was, there is a um Kashmiri in the Kashmir area somehow 745 verses came up in the Gita, but that is something which is added over there locally. Now, for example Abhinav Gupta was a commentator and he was a Shaivite, Kashmiri Shaivite and he tries to interpret the Bhagavad Gita so as to prove that Shiva is the absolute truth.
So, now if you look at the Bhagavad Gita, the word Shiva doesn't come even once in the Bhagavad Gita. Rudra comes occasionally, but certainly Shiva doesn't come and to try to interpret the Bhagavad Gita to establish Shiva as the supreme is definitely a very twisted sort of interpretation. So, we don't have to get carried away by disturbed by this because this is something which is just locally there in the small part of the, small part of the country and even there also for a small fraction of periods.
So, if you see from the 10th century to 13th, 14th century that is the time when these 745 verses were talked about. Subsequently, however, Kashmiri commentators are also there. They have also used the same Vulgate of the Gita which is used by, originally by Shankaracharya.
Now Shankaracharya also mentions that beforehand there were commentaries on the Gita, but those commentaries are usually not so well known and are often not available. But the point is 700 verses is the standard in the Gita. Now some people try to claim that in the Mahabharata it is said that the Bhagavad Gita has 745 verses, but this is not found in most editions of the Mahabharata and certainly it's not there in the critical edition of the Mahabharata.
In some editions of the Mahabharata, of course, which are again related with the Kashmiri tradition, there are some references to the 745, there is a verse which is supposed to be saying that there are 745 verses. This verse can also be seen to be as something which is not authentic and we don't have to, certainly, so firstly, it's not that there is only 745 verses and 700 verses. If you go back to the historical record, originally, so Shankaracharya was Acharya before Ramakant and so originally there were 700 verses and whether there were any time 745 verses, that also is questionable because that is only within a very small fraction of people who claim that there are 745 verses and those people don't claim it anymore, the people in that tradition and that area also don't claim it and have not claimed it for the last 500 years or more than that.
So therefore, the words of Krishna in both their essential meaning and in their textual fidelity are safely available to us even today and we can understand it as we receive it from the Acharyas in the Sampradaya. Thank you. Great.