Editorial method
Four voices, never confused.
A trustworthy guide has to make its own boundaries visible. These are ours, published so that these pages can be held to them.
Whose interpretation of the Bhagavad Gita is this?
The Trust’s own, and this page says exactly what that means. Four voices are kept apart wherever the Gita is discussed on this site, and each is labelled where it appears: the Sanskrit text and who speaks it, taken from the text’s own उवाच line; the Trust’s translation, in both languages, with no third-party translation anywhere on the site; the Trust’s reading of why a verse stands where it does; and a question for present life, which is never presented as scripture. What Shankara, Ramanuja and Madhva make of a verse is deliberately not here, and this page says why.
Hansi Gita Bhawan Trust · The Gita for Life
Why a method is published at all
Anyone can put the Bhagavad Gita on the internet. Most of what is there gives a verse, a translation with no named translator, and a paragraph of explanation with no stated source, and asks to be believed. The reader has no way to tell whether the explanation is a school’s position, the writer’s own view, or something half-remembered from a talk. A small trust in a small town cannot out-argue that by asserting harder. What it can do is say exactly what it is doing, hold to it, and publish the rule so that a stranger can catch it failing.
The confusion the rule is against
Four different kinds of statement get made about a verse of the Gita and they are routinely printed as though they were one kind. There is what the Sanskrit says, which can be checked. There is what a tradition of interpretation makes of it, which is a position held by named people for stated reasons. There is what a present-day editor concludes, which is an argument and may be wrong. And there is what a reader might do about it tomorrow morning, which is not scripture at all and should never be dressed as scripture. Blur these and the reader cannot disagree with you, because they cannot find the join. Keep them apart and the reader can reject the fourth while keeping the first.
What follows from it
The rule has consequences that cost something, and they are worth naming because a rule that costs nothing is decoration. No third-party translation appears anywhere on this site, so the Trust had to write its own in two languages, verse by verse, for all seven hundred. The lexical index says only that a word occurs in a verse and never what the word means there, so it is less useful than it could be and more reliable than it would otherwise be. And several pages end by saying that the Gita does not settle a question the reader came to have settled.
A guide worth trusting has to make its own boundaries visible. Four voices are kept apart everywhere the Gita is discussed on this site, and each is labelled where it appears. A SIMPLE TEST If the example from work or family or modern life were taken away, would the reader still understand the verse? If not, the page has stopped explaining the Gita and started explaining the analogy.
- 01
The Sanskrit text
The shloka itself, its speaker taken from the text’s own उवाच line, and its place in the dialogue. Public domain, transcribed from published editions and cross-checked verse by verse.
- 02
The Trust’s translation
Every English and Hindi rendering on this site is the Trust’s own work, made for this site. No third-party translation appears anywhere, in any language, on any page.
- 03
The Trust’s reading
Why a verse stands where it does, which movement it belongs to, and what the Trust takes it to turn on. Editorial throughout, and labelled as the Trust’s reading wherever it is printed. A reader may disagree with all of it and still trust the two voices above.
- 04
A question for present life
It may open the verse. It is not the verse’s meaning, and it is never presented as scripture or as bhashya.
Reading across the text
A verse rarely stands alone.
A cross-reference is not a decorative list of related verses. It is part of the reading. A verse on action may need Chapter 3 to say what disciplined action means, Chapter 5 for non-doership, Chapter 9 for offering, and Chapter 18 to show where action and surrender finally meet. A verse on the Self in Chapter 2 may need Chapter 13 to sharpen the distinction between field and knower, and Chapter 15 to reconnect the individual self to the Supreme. So every chain printed on this site is there for a reason: an earlier verse that made this one necessary, a later one that deepens it, a parallel in another vocabulary, or — most often the useful one — the verse that stops the teaching being turned into a slogan. The chains appear under each theme on the reading paths page, and beside each verse the Trust has written about.
The method, carried out once
One verse, four voices: 2.47
A rule is easier to state than to see. So here is the most quoted verse in the book, taken through all four voices in order. Read down the four and notice where each one stops — the stopping is the method.
कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन । मा कर्मफलहेतुर्भूर्मा ते सङ्गोऽस्त्वकर्मणि ॥
01
The Sanskrit text, and who speaks it
Checkable
कर्मणि एव अधिकारः ते, मा फलेषु कदाचन. The words are: in action alone is your अधिकार — your entitlement, your warrant, the thing you have a claim on — never in the फल, the fruits. Then two prohibitions: do not become one whose motive is the fruit of action, and do not be attached to inaction either. Krishna is speaking; the text says so in its own श्रीभगवानुवाच line before the verse. That is the whole of this voice. It does not say what अधिकार means in a life, and it does not say what to do on Monday.
02
What the traditions make of it
Positions the site does not yet name
This is the one place on the site where the second voice appears at all, and even here it names nobody — which is exactly the gap described below. The major commentarial traditions differ here, and the difference is not a misunderstanding to be smoothed away. Broadly: one line reads the verse as removing the desire for the fruit while the action itself continues unchanged; another reads it as offering the fruit to God, so that the action becomes worship rather than transaction. Those are not the same claim, and which one a reader inherits shapes what they think the Gita is for. This site names the disagreement and does not resolve it, and it does not paraphrase any commentator’s own words, which are that commentator’s work.
03
The Trust’s own reading
An argument, and it may be wrong
The Trust reads 2.47 by where it stands rather than by itself. It arrives after 2.31–38, where Krishna has just given Arjuna the warrior’s argument for fighting, and before 2.48, which defines yoga as evenness. Standing there, the verse is not advice about ambition; it is the hinge that turns a question about whether to act into a question about how. And the second half is the half that is almost always dropped: मा ते सङ्गोऽस्त्वकर्मणि — do not be attached to inaction. Arjuna at this moment is not overreaching. He is refusing. A verse quoted to calm the striving is being spoken to a man who has stopped.
04
A question for present life
Not scripture. Yours to answer or ignore.
Where in your week are you not striving but stalled — and calling the stall detachment? The Gita does not answer this for you, the Trust does not answer it for you, and nothing on this site will tell you what to do about it. The question is printed because the verse raises it and because a page that raised it and then answered it would be handing you the fourth voice as though it were the first.
Telling them apart on the page
What each thing you see is claiming
- A Devanagari block with the speaker named above it
- First voice. The text. The speaker is taken from the verse’s own उवाच line and never inferred.
- An English or Hindi rendering directly under it
- Still the first voice, but now in the Trust’s words. Every translation on this site is the Trust’s own; no third-party translation appears anywhere, in any language.
- A word in Devanagari with a count beside it
- The lexical index. It asserts only that the word occurs in those verses, which a machine re-checks on every build. It never says what the word means there.
- A theme, a movement, or a line about where a verse stands
- Third voice. The Trust’s reading, and an editorial judgement. A reader may disagree with every one of them and still trust the verses they point at.
- A question addressed to you
- Fourth voice, and never scripture. It is printed as a question and left as one.
- A block headed “epic background”
- Mahabharata, not Gita. The 700 verses do not narrate it. It is here because Chapter 1 cannot be read without it, and it is marked so that it is never mistaken for the text.
The gap
What is deliberately not here
The commentarial layer. What Shankara, Ramanuja and Madhva argue about a given verse — the actual substance of a thousand years of disagreement about this text — is not on these pages. Their Sanskrit is out of copyright and the modern English translations of it are not, so publishing that layer properly means either commissioning fresh translations from the Sanskrit or paraphrasing somebody’s protected work and calling it a summary. The Trust will not do the second. Until it can afford the first, the honest thing is to say that the gap is a gap and not a judgement: a reader who wants to know how the schools read 2.47 will not learn it here, and should go to the schools.
Where each statement comes from
Labelled at source.
- THE SANSKRIT
- Public domain. Every verse transcribed from at least two published editions and cross-checked character by character; where they disagreed a third decided it. Downloadable in full as JSON and CSV from the research page.
- THE SPEAKER
- Read from the उवाच line that governs the verse, as transcribed — never guessed from the verse number. That is why 1.3 to 1.11, which are Duryodhana’s words reported by Sanjaya, are counted to Sanjaya here, and why the counts on this site differ from some published ones.
- THE TRANSLATIONS
- The Trust’s own, in both languages, and the Trust holds the copyright in them. Quote them with attribution to Hansi Gita Bhawan Trust.
- THE LEXICAL INDEX
- Mechanical. A verse is listed under a word when its Devanagari contains that word — open the verse and it is there. Words of the same idea that are different words are counted apart and named. Nothing here is a judgement.
- THE TRUST’S READING
- From the Trust’s book, *The Gita for Life* — the movements, the themes, the notes on the anchor verses, and the nine threads. Editorial, and labelled as such wherever it appears.
- EPIC BACKGROUND
- Anything from the wider Mahabharata rather than the 700 verses is labelled as epic background, on the page where it appears.
- WHAT IS NOT HERE YET
- The commentarial layer. What Shankara, Ramanuja and Madhva make of a verse — and where they differ — is not on this site, and no page summarises a commentator. That layer waits for a Sanskrit reader willing to put their name to it. A misattribution to an acharya on a trust’s website is not a small error, and an absent layer is better than an unsafe one.
700 or 701
Which count this site publishes.
The count used throughout this site is 700 verses. Some digital and received editions count an additional opening verse in Chapter 13, producing 701. This site takes the 700-verse recension as its base. An edition that counts that extra verse numbers every verse of Chapter 13 one higher than this site does, so a citation of 13.n elsewhere is 13.(n−1) here. The chapter page says so too.
What these pages will not do
The rules, in the Trust’s own words.
- Do not reduce Dhritarashtra to “blindness = ignorance.” Begin with the king, father and political situation; only then discuss symbolic readings.
- Do not reduce Duryodhana to a leadership case study or a personality type. His strategic competence and moral choices must both remain visible.
- Do not make Bhishma’s vow a simple lesson in sacrifice. The epic also shows the enormous consequences of vows, loyalty and institutional duty.
- Do not treat Arjuna as cowardly. His crisis follows recognition of relationship, consequence and conflicting dharma.
- Do not treat Krishna merely as therapist, coach or management teacher. The Gita progressively discloses his divine identity.
- Do not use characters to label living people (“my colleague is Duryodhana”). Use them to sharpen self-examination and textual understanding.
- When a biographical detail comes from the wider Mahabharata rather than the 700 verses of the Gita, label it as epic background rather than implying that the Gita itself narrates it.
How to check this site
Everything above is a claim. Here is how to test it.
The text can be downloaded and checked
All seven hundred verses are published as plain files — Devanagari, transliteration and both translations — so that anyone can take the whole corpus away and check it against a printed edition without going page by page. The research page carries the downloads and the licence.
The claims about the text are machine-checked
Every verse reference printed anywhere on this site must exist among the 700 or the site does not build. Every word in the lexical index must actually occur in the verses it claims, and every name in the index must occur in the verses it is credited to, and both are re-verified from the Devanagari on each build. These checks do not make the readings right. They make the citations honest, which is a smaller claim and a keepable one.
Corrections are published, not quietly made
If something here is wrong — a verse mistranscribed, a name attached to the wrong person, a reading that cannot be defended — the Trust wants to be told, and will say what was changed rather than changing it silently. A site that edits its errors out of existence is asking to be trusted about everything else on the same terms.
Corrections and disagreements: info@gitabhawan.org.in
Common questions
Does this site follow one sampradaya?
No. Where the major traditions read a verse differently, the difference is stated rather than blended into a false consensus, and the Trust’s own synthesis is labelled as its own rather than presented as a new school.
Whose translations are these?
The Trust’s own, written for this website, in both English and Hindi, and the Trust holds the copyright in them. The Sanskrit is public domain, transcribed from published editions and cross-checked verse by verse. No third-party translation appears anywhere on this site.
How do I report an error?
Write to info@gitabhawan.org.in. Corrections are published, not quietly made.