Text layers in the Gita

[Michael Witzel]

These are the joys of quoting from memory, away from the texts, and using
similes:

1. Similes carry only so far:   5% or 95%.
Mine was merely given to drive the point home, comparandum: reading ANY
text as unitary, not to dissect/interpret the Bible.   Result: the author's
intent (mine) has already been misunderstood and reinterpreted a few  hours
after writing:

>I would disagree ... For one thing, the Hebrew Bible is a far longer text;....
>-- the books comprising it vary considerably in style, etc.

They are not even all in the same language, Hebrew. Some parts are in
Aramaic.  See above.
Point is:  they are read as a *unitary* text --and in antiquated *English
etc.* at that-- by most (not specially educated) Christians, Mormons.

>The Gita has but 700 or so
>verses (the Kashmiri version, incidentally, is some 45 verses longer, not
>shorter),
sorry, my memory!
> and the style is internally consistent

2. But that is precicely the bone of contention, and has been for 150 years
or so. I am not going to start discussing that question again here. I
merely wanted to draw Members' attention to it.
Since it had not been mentioned.

However, small point: the grammar, for example, isn't so consistent:
Krishna sometime talks "Vedic" and says (made up example)   maa .....
(several words)... vadhiiH!
And in another section, he speaks 'good' Epic, but bad non-Paninean Skt.,
such as  (made up)
maagaccha!  (univerb., with wrongly put imperative).

Not the same style, as far as I am concerned:
Old fashioned (Vedic)   VS.  common North Indian Epic Koine.
No time to check exact examples. You can find them easily enough if you wish.

>-- as, in my opinion, is
>the doctrinal content.

3. That precisely has been denied by some. They see here some 4 different
doctrines. See Jezic and / or Molinar (or many older publications) for
details.

> It is synthetic, certainly, but historically
>multi-layered? I think not.

Then, all 4 points of view are contemporary? Fine, but even then it can be
shown that one at least, (Ksatriyas')  killing with no "guilt" attached,
is quite old, and seen in the Veda.

>The traditional Vedantic view of the Gita *and* all the (classical)
>Upanishads as a unitary corpus    ...    *is*
>comparable to a unitarist interpretation of the Bible. Whether we need to
>label it 'bad', even from a scholarly point of view, is a different matter.

5. Of course it is bad:  yet,  note that I merely called it "bad" only from
the point of view of the authors'  *original* intent.

And ADDED that it is *fine* in the Christian, Mormon case (or  the Vedantic
view of the Upanisads), from THEIR (later) point of view. Even a scholarly
one, but *only* if one studies these *later* traditions...

<<Add now :   Madhav now says the same: he too thinks both approaches have
their own value, if  I understand him correctly >>

>In my view, ahistorical readings of a text are not necessarily 'bad' unless
>actually posing as historical.

Which is of course how the Gita is usually interpreted, as  the unified
text of the (real) words of (a historical) Krishna, Kali Yuga date
attached. --
As one high level Delhi politician, well before  the  BJP,  once told me:

"Since sound is eternal, what we need is just the proper type of radio to
listen to Krishna!"

I agree. This *is a challenge* for the  high tech contributors on this
list. Would love to see it  (-:-)  Solves all our philological problems.
But until that very distant day ...  back to square one.

................


(  Well, small correction, I hear that we can at least listen, if not to
Krishna himself, then to Vyaasa giving his version, once per year [on Janai
Purnima?], at Poona...  Through someone, sitting in coils of wire connected
to a mosquito screen window, shaking to and fro, hence: Kampakatha-Dezika
(Epic, for *Dezastha).

Pune inhabitants will know better   ....   Madhav? )


MW
========================================================
Michael Witzel
Department of Sanskrit & Indian Studies, Harvard University
2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge MA 02138, USA

ph. 1- 617-496 2990 (also messages)
home page:  http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm

Elect. Journ. of Vedic Studies:  http://www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs