Which are the important commentaries on the Gita?

Transcript

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Thank you Hare Krishna Question Which are the authorized commentaries in the Bhagavad Gita? Answer there are many authorized commentaries written by the followers of the four Sampradayas so I can’t give a full list it will become a very long long talk I will focus on some important commentaries in this answer so of course we have Sri Prabhupada’s Bhagavad Gita which is a foundational book Sri Prabhupada himself quoted referred to and quoted several commentaries so in our tradition if we go backwards in the Gaudiya Vishnu tradition we have Bhaktivinoda Thakur who in one sense wrote two commentaries in the Bhagavad Gita and in another sense he actually primarily rewrote he just made available the commentaries of the previous Acharyas with some further points of his own so going backwards then I will come back again to Bhaktivinoda Thakur so prior to him two Acharyas have written commentaries Baldevidya Bhushan and Vishwanath Acharya Thakur so Vishwanath Acharya Thakur wrote a commentary Sarartha Varshini and this Bhagavatam commentary Sarartha Varshini so in Sarartha Varshini he gives a Rasic explanation of Bhagavad Gita going deep into the moods of both the conversationists and giving us a very insightful understanding of the heart of Bhakti of the Bhakti heart of the Gita apart from that he also gives a lot of illuminating technical analysis in terms of the various levels of Bhakti which a person can be at and how one can move from one level to the higher level so his Bhaktivinoda Thakur’s commentary is a very devotionally rich commentary and apart from that if we look at after him there is Baldevidya Bhushan wrote his commentary, Baldevidya Bhushan primarily wrote commentaries in all the Prasthantraya on the Upanishads, on the Vedanta Sutra and Bhagavad Gita so his commentary is focusing more on the Siddhanta and establishing Gaudiya Siddhanta or showing basically how Bhagavad Gita is harmonious with Gaudiya Siddhanta so he has his own framework he talks about three levels of people and he uses his own terminology, it’s a technical and I won’t go into it right now he talks about three kinds of people and at three different levels of practice and then he essentially states that if we look because in the Bhagavad Gita there are several places where Krishna seems to be contradicting himself so he by using this three level framework he shows how actually there is no contradiction if you understand which verses are referring to which of the contradicting verses are referring to which level and in that way he gives his own ingenious way of explaining the Bhagavad Gita in a harmonious way and in Bhaktivinoda Thakur wrote Rasikranjan and Vidvatranjan two books on the Gita which were largely he basically republished when he read and republished Vishwanath Chakravarthy Thakur’s commentary that he published with his own comments occasionally here and there on some important verses that was the Rasikranjan and when he read and republished Baldevindabhijan’s commentary that he published as Vidvatranjan so these are the commentaries within the Gauri sampradaya.
Jiva Goswami quotes from the Bhagavad Gita on some occasions but he has not written a commentary on the Gita and apart from that of course there are many other commentaries but one of the most important commentaries is Ramavacharya’s commentary Ramavacharya’s Gita it was now he keeps his commentary relatively speaking quite brief Ramavacharya engages in polemics polemics means argument for the sake of defeating opposing views so he is quite polemical in his in his commentary on the Vedanta Sutra wherein he systematically and thoroughly tears into Advaitic ideas and counters them but in the Gita commentary he keeps most of his commentary comments quite brief except for example a few occasions such as 2.12 and then 13.12 wherein he goes into elaborate analysis for refuting Mayavad now apart from Ramavacharya of course there have been subsequent Acharyas in the Sri Sampradaya also have written commentaries Madhavacharya himself did not comment on all the verses of the Gita but he has commented in his writing on some verses and those commentaries are also available and again the Sridhar Swami of course has written a commentary on the Gita and sorry so the point is that there are various commentaries like this and as of now for our study it is we can go and study the Piyasacharya’s commentaries Bhishmaji Thakur and Daldevidya Goswami’s commentaries are quite nice to study and the important point for us to understand is that rather than studying the Piyasacharya’s commentaries directly because often we can get confused because they are writing in a different cultural frame of reference so it may become a little confusing so it is better for us to study those commentaries at least in the initial stages of our spiritual life through the commentaries of through the classes of devotees who have studied those commentaries through the writings of devotees who have studied those studied those commentaries so for example if we hear those classes and understand those properly then we will have a proper framework through which we will be able to study the Piyasacharya’s books and relish them otherwise the framework may seem a little alien and we will not be able to connect with them or relish them so there is a whole ocean of wisdom one of my friends is a Madhava scholar and he showed me one full huge volume on the Bhagavad Gita and I looked at it and it was just chapter one and I said what is it? actually it is just chapter one each verse with multiple commentaries one Acharya’s commentary and then another Acharya’s so one book as big as the Bhagavatam volume we have that was just one chapter of the Bhagavad Gita and like that there were 18 volumes in the Bhagavad Gita and all of them were in Sanskrit or got transmitted in it so there is a whole reservoir of treasure for us to study and the most important thing is not that we have to study all the commentaries but most important is that we learn the message of Bhakti that there is in the Bhagavad Gita so that’s why we see that Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu when he met the South Indian Brahmana at that time he appreciated that this Brahmana was having tears of love going through his eyes although he was pronouncing the Sanskrit poorly although he was not and others were taunting him he was actually he was relishing the fact that when Chaitanya Mahaprabhu asked him he said that I am relishing how could Krishna the Supreme Lord become the charioteer for his devotee this is so special, this is so rare but we relish the thought that Krishna is such a Bhaktavatsar that’s why there are tears in my eyes and Chaitanya Mahaprabhu said that you have actually understood the importance of the Bhagavad Gita because the essential conclusion of the Gita is to surrender in Bhakti to Krishna and that’s what you have understood that’s why he considered him to be the true master of the Gita. Thank you.