- If you insist that without situating Gita in the massive text that Mahabharata is, we cannot understand or interpret Gita, then you provide such a gigantic con-text to the 18 chapters that the Gita is, and because a move like this can only give interpretations of a small text by situating in such a huge con-text, any and almost every interpretation can become valid or acceptable or permissible. We will have on our hands a plethora of interpretations, many in conflict with the other, so that we cannot even decide whether there is even one or some interpretation(s) that is (are) better than the other. We end up formulating an impossible problem: which interpretation to choose and why? We cannot appeal to the implicit goal present in text interpretations, viz., consistency and completeness nor to criterion like coherence (because it is unclear what coherence would consist of in this case).
- Suppose that you ask the following question instead: which other texts (that is, con-texts) do we need to read and understand the two articles on relativity? We do need background knowledge to draw some possible implications from these articles, but what con-texts do we need? Which con-texts are needed to study Feynman’s Lectures, or Darwin’s origin or similar works in the natural sciences? Some knowledge is required; some skills are necessary; we must be able to read a natural language, etc., but these are not con-texts but requirements to acquire knowledge.
- Suppose further that you see the Gita as a text that imparts knowledge. (I will leave out the question what that knowledge could be.) Suppose too that there are prerequisites to acquire this knowledge, as is the case with knowledge. And that we can evaluate and judge the Gita as knowledge as well. Which insurmountable problem does such an approach create? One might not be able to read the Gita and acquire the knowledge it imparts by just knowing a natural language. However, that would apply to all knowledge, would it not? You will not understand the relativity theories just because you can read those articles in, say, the original or in a faithful translation. A popular commentary that ‘explains’ these papers will not make you a physicist either. What hinders us from looking at the Gita this way? What objections are there for such an approach?
- In fact, if you look at most claims made about the Gita (Sen, Doniger, Danto, etc.), you notice that they look at the Gita either as a literary text, or as a quasi-moral or philosophical text, or as a religious text etc. I have not come across a single interpretation of even the first chapter of the Gita that goes beyond these approaches and almost all of them tell the same story: Arjuna was despondent or felt extremely sad that he must kill (his relatives) on the battlefield and the 17 chapters of the Gita are there to ‘comfort’ him. How do they do so? The acts and consequences story is one answer. Here are my naïve questions: why write 17 chapters just to say ‘karmanyevadhikaraste…’? After all, this thought is exactly one verse long and, in fact, it is written out in the Gita. What do the other verses do? How, exactly, do these 17 chapters ‘comfort’ Arjuna and ‘therapeutically’ cure his despondency? I have not read anyone either raising these questions or answering them. (I confess that I have not read many commentaries. I am glad about this.) How does the fourth chapter (on Jnanyoga) answer any of the questions that Arjuna raises in the first chapter; what are the answers to those questions; and how exactly do these answers remove Arjuna’s despondency?
- Such and many other questions arise if and only if you do not see the Gita as a literary, moral, philosophical, or religious text. If you see it as a knowledge text, these and many more questions arise to which the Gita attempts to give an answer. If one takes such an approach, I see its con-text adding (in some of the Parvas) explications, clarifications and reasonings that are present in extremely abbreviated forms in the Gita.