Universal Gita

Rating:
Summary: The Gold in the Gita
Review: We learn from the jacket of this book that Eric Sharpe, at the time he wrote it, was Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Sydney, Australia. Apparently he is a leading scholarly authority on religion, and he has written many books on New Testament Studies, Indian cultural history, Hinduism, the Christian missionary impact on India, Scandinavian religious life, and general theological issues.

The present book, as its subtitle informs us, is a historical survey of "Western Images of the Bhagavad Gita." As such, it ought to be of interest to anyone who would like to learn about the various influences the Gita has had on the West since it was first translated by Charles Wilkins in 1785.

As befits a scholarly publication, 'The Universal Gita' includes a preface, an introduction, footnotes, glossary, bibliography and index. The body of the book falls into two Parts: Part One: 1785-1885, and Part Two: 1885-1985.

To give you some idea of the contents, the chapter titles are as follows: Part One: 1 - The First Translation; 2 - Romantics and Transcendentalists; 3 - Missionaries and Mystics; 4 - Theories of Origin; Part Two: 5 - Renaissance, Radicalism and Theosophy; 6 - Gandhi's Gita; 7 - Rudolf Otto, J. W. Hauer, and T. S. Eliot; 8 - The Gita and the Counter-Culture; 9 - Ethical Monotheism and Social Caste.

On the surface of it, what we have here is a thorough and scholarly survey, and I won't deny that the book contains a great deal of useful information about the interesting period covered. What we will not find in this book, however, is a sensitive and sympathetic understanding of the nature of the Gita for Professor Sharpe, sad to say, has precious little sympathy for anyone who actually takes the Gita seriously.

His intense bias against the Gita, and against those who try to read it in the way it was intended to be read as telling us something very important about life and reality, comes out very clearly in his style. Although he is, in a sense, an excellent writer, one can hardly admire a style which, as does his, makes such heavy use of propagandistic devices such as slanted language, loaded words, false analogies, flippancy, etc.

The book is also filled with puzzling statements. We are told, for example, that although the misguided youth of the sixties had some interest in the Gita, no-one today bothers to read it. Really? I wonder why an Amazon search under 'Bhagavad Gita' produces a list of almost two hundred editions and studies of the Gita? Have publishers cured themselves of the nasty habit of not publishing books that aren't being bought and read?

The proper use of the Gita is perfectly clear to Professor Sharpe. It exists to serve as a quarry for scholarly researchers who are interested in investigating "the tough historical and textual questions" (page 137) in the hope, presumably, of stumbling across some academic nugget which has been overlooked by others and which, with luck, they may be able to work up into a publishable article, or even another scholarly book. This, for Professor Sharpe, is the only gold to be found in the Gita. Ordinary folks, unless of course they are Hindus, should not be bothering their heads with it.

Readers who would like to find an unbiased study of the Gita might care to look at the philosophic treatment in Professor Eliot Deutsch's edition (1968). Another fine study is George Feuerstein's 'Introduction to the Bhagavad Gita - Its Philosophy and Cultural Setting' (1983). Feuerstein is also a published scholar, but one who seems to have a deeper insight into the true nature of both the Gita and at least some of the contemporary academic approaches to it.