The Bhagavad Gita: A Biography: Journal of Vaishnava Studies

Abstract

All great religious books, no matter how and when they were created, are living things whose lives continue to influence people across the ages and civilizations. As part of Princeton’s series dedicated to the lives of great religious books, Richard Davis produces a rich biography of the oft-quoted Hindu scripture the Bhagavad Gita, examining how it has lived on in diverse contexts and through adverse situations. He traces how the Gita travelled from ancient India to the modern West, from the hands of Hindu philosophers like Shankara and Ramanuja and Indian nationalists like Swami Vivekananda and Mahatma Gandhi, to Western intellectuals like Friedrich Max Müller and J. Robert Oppenheimer.