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Poetic Form of the Bhagavad Gita

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Bhagavad-Gita is a very special narrative poem that was originally written in Epic- Puranic Sanskrit, an ancient Indo-European that developed in what is now known as India around 1600 B.C.E. This Poem is a very interesting and complex set of verses that introduces lot to us in such a short read. It asks many of the most difficult questions and we are left mind boggled thinking “What would I do if I were in Arjuna’s place?” There are many things that are entwined in Bhagavad- Gita that is interesting, repetitive, and complex that help us to understand a culture and life much different from ours today. The First thing that I noticed when I first began reading Bhagavad- Gita wasn’t that it was complex, interesting or enlightening. It was the format of the poem, it’s a very specific format and that’s what caught my eye right when I looked at the first chapter. So in a way I guess it was very interesting to me. Firstly, I saw that it was a four line poem and after I read all the way through the end I noticed that this didn’t change at all and that it was absolute. It’s a very specific formation where the text appears to be very disciplined and shaped almost into nice little rectangles. In a way this could relate to the context of Bhagavad- Gita, everything is very disciplined and absolute but it could just be how the translator decided to format the poem. Even so, the translator chose a nice look for the poem and the disciplined look is pretty clean. Lastly, although the line structure didn’t change I found one other thing in the structure of the poem to be interesting. I went through thinking that it would stay eight syllables to the end but in some places there are instances where the syllables change and include more numbers of syllables per line. I will be talking about chapter eleven verses forty three through fifty, whether this odd inconsistency is just the translator’s interpretation or if it really plays a role in this play, I will try I bring my analysis of it to the table. I can’t be sure if this happens before forty three in chapter eleven because lines fourteen through forty two from chapter eleven aren’t included in our reading, but this is my observation anyways. In rectangle forty five there are eleven syllables per line and all of the other lines from forty three through fifty begin with eleven syllables. During these verses a very important thing happens between Arjuna and Krsna. Krsna shows Arjuna his divine thousand- armed form as a way to let him know how small of a matter he is involved in, that there’s a much bigger universe out there. Arjuna thanks him for allowing him to see this but the human mind isn’t capable of seeing nor processing something as divine as a Gods true form, so he pleads him to go bac

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