Introduction

On the field of Kurukshetra a great battle is about to begin. Arjuna, hero of the Pandavas, stands in his chariot and sees in the ranks opposite his teachers, his grandfather, his uncles and his cousins; his limbs fail him, his bow slips from his hand, and he says, 'I will not fight.' His charioteer Krishna, an incarnation of the god Vishnu, then gives him the teaching of eighteen chapters: the soul is never born and never dies; one must do one's duty without attachment to the fruits of action; and there are paths to liberation through action, through knowledge and through devotion. This poem of seven hundred verses is the best-loved scripture of Hinduism; Gandhi called it 'my mother', and Emerson, Thoreau and Oppenheimer were all deeply marked by it.