Bhagavad Gita
A Hindu sacred text of uncertain date (probably composed in its present form between the fifth and second centuries BC), incorporated as a seven-hundred-verse episode within the sixth book of the great epic poem the Mahabharata, of which it constitutes, despite its relative brevity, the most influential philosophical and spiritual core, read independently more than any other portion across the Indian subcontinent and, since the nineteenth century, worldwide. The work takes the form of a dramatic dialogue in the midst of the battlefield of Kurukshetra between the warrior prince Arjuna, paralysed by moral anguish at the prospect of killing kinsmen, teachers and friends in the imminent civil war, and his charioteer Krishna, who turns out to be an incarnation (avatar) of the god Vishnu and who offers him, across the text's eighteen chapters, a complete teaching on duty (dharma), selfless action and the ultimate nature of reality. The Gita's central concept is karma yoga, the path of action performed without attachment to its fruits — 'you have a right to action, never to its fruits' — which Krishna presents as a path of spiritual liberation compatible with fulfilling one's social and family duties, in contrast to the total renunciation of the world practised by ascetics. The text integrates and harmonises three distinct spiritual paths — the aforementioned karma yoga (action), jnana yoga (knowledge and metaphysical discernment) and bhakti yoga (loving devotion to God) — in a synthesis that has allowed the Gita to be interpreted in remarkably diverse ways throughout history, from strictly metaphysical commentaries to political readings (Gandhi found in it inspiration for his doctrine of non-violence, despite the text's explicit martial setting) and modern psychological ones. First translated into a European language in 1785 (into English, by Charles Wilkins), the Bhagavad Gita exerted a decisive influence on Western thinkers such as Schopenhauer, Emerson and Thoreau, and remains, together with the Upanishads, one of the most frequently cited foundational texts of the entire Hindu philosophical tradition.