Swaveda

Translation

Bhagavad Gitaभगवद्गीता

By Vyāsa (traditional attribution) — embedded in the Bhīṣma Parva of the Mahabharata. Translated by Sir Edwin Arnold, 1885. Public domain.

A 700-verse philosophical dialogue between the warrior Arjuna and Kṛṣṇa as charioteer, on the eve of the Mahabharata war. Embedded within the Bhīṣma Parva but treated as a freestanding philosophical work. Arnold's verse translation, *The Song Celestial* (1885), is the most widely-read English public-domain version; modern translations (van Buitenen, Stoler Miller) are more philologically careful.

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Chapters

  1. Chapter 1

    Discourse 1: Arjuna's Despondency

  2. Chapter 2

    Discourse 2: The Yoga of Knowledge

  3. Chapter 3

    Discourse 3: The Yoga of Action

  4. Chapter 4

    Discourse 4: The Yoga of Wisdom and Renunciation

  5. Chapter 5

    Discourse 5: The Yoga of Renunciation

  6. Chapter 6

    Discourse 6: The Yoga of Self-Restraint

  7. Chapter 7

    Discourse 7: The Yoga of Knowledge and Realization

  8. Chapter 8

    Discourse 8: The Yoga of the Imperishable Brahman

  9. Chapter 9

    Discourse 9: The Yoga of Royal Knowledge and Royal Mystery

  10. Chapter 10

    Discourse 10: The Yoga of Divine Manifestations

  11. Chapter 11

    Discourse 11: The Vision of the Universal Form

  12. Chapter 12

    Discourse 12: The Yoga of Devotion

  13. Chapter 13

    Discourse 13: The Field and the Knower of the Field

  14. Chapter 14

    Discourse 14: The Three Gunas

  15. Chapter 15

    Discourse 15: The Supreme Spirit

  16. Chapter 16

    Discourse 16: The Divine and the Demoniac

  17. Chapter 17

    Discourse 17: The Three Kinds of Faith

  18. Chapter 18

    Discourse 18: Liberation Through Renunciation