The Bhagavad-Gita is universally known in India.

It is reported to have been translated into 82 languages and it can safely be said that at least 65 or more of these are foreign languages. There is no missionary zeal behind the publication of the Bhagavad-Gita. It has been done by the people out of their sheer love for the non-dogmatic philosophy and depiction, in the Gita, of the entire human life---of its source and culmination in emancipation. The original attraction for the eternal teachings of the Bhagavad-Gita appealed to the enlightened minds of Western scholars, who took a serious interest in disseminating the Gita's non-dogmatic, scientific description of human life.

In 1945, the Bhagavad-Gita by Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood was published as a Mentor Pocket Book. Definitely, by this time, more than a million copies have been sold. In his lengthy introduction to this rendition of the sacred scripture, Aldous Huxley very beautifully remarked:

"The Gita is one of the clearest and most comprehensive summaries of the Perennial Philosophy ever to have been made. Hence its enduring value, not only for Indians, but for all mankind. . . . The Bhagavadgita is perhaps the most systematic spiritual statement of the Perennial Philosophy."

It is reported that there are 6,500 distinct languages and dialects around the world. The Bible Society, which was founded in England in 1816, has 146 branches throughout the world. The Society took a leading role in popularizing the Bible with Christian missionary zeal in different nations around the world. Recent statistics indicate that it has been able to publish the complete Bible in 392 languages. This may be compared to the manner and practice in which the Bhagavad-Gita has been translated and disseminated. The history of its spell and its impact on the West begins with the father of Indology, Sir William Jones, and his "dream-child," the Asiatic Society.

The Impact of the Asiatic Society and Charles Wilkins' Bhagavad-Gita on Europe

The Asiatic Society of Bengal was founded in Calcutta by Sir William Jones (1746-1794) on January 15, 1784 and pioneered Indian research and scholarship in particular and Asian studies generally. It was an epoch-making event in the meeting of East and West, on both the intellectual and spiritual levels. The Society inspired Sanskrit studies in Europe, whose literature was permeated and enriched by Jones' numerous translations and the Society's journal, Asiatic Researches. Western studies in Sanskrit and the disciplines of comparative grammar and philology that were subsequently established, are indebted to Sir Jones and the work of the Asiatic Society.

The greatest impact on Europe came through the Bhagavad-Gita. Sir Charles Wilkins (1750-1836) loved the Bhagavad-Gita wholeheartedly---he compared it to the Gospel of St. John of the New Testament. Under the auspices of the Society, his "Bhagavad-Geeta", or "Dialogues of Kreeshna and Arjoon", the very first translation of the Gita into a European language, (Gauranga Gopal Sengupta, Indology and Its Eminent Western Savants, Calcutta: Punthi-Pustak, 1996), 33) was printed in London at the direction of the East India Company upon the special recommendation of Warren Hastings. Hastings had a fascination for the Gita and he pursued the Court of Directors of the East India Company until the directors agreed to publish the work at the company's expense. In a learned preface Hastings wrote to Wilkins' work, he praised its literary merits and asserted that the study and true practice of the Gita's teachings would lead humanity to peace and bliss. In Indology and Its Eminent Western Savants, Sengupta confirms Hastings' great esteem for the Bhagavad-Gita:

"Warren Hastings, while forwarding a copy of the Bhagavad-Gita [by Wilkins] to the chairman of the East India Company, in course of an introduction stated that the work was "a performance of great originality, of a sublimity of conception, reasoning and diction almost unequalled, and single exception among all the known religions of mankind of a theology accurately corresponding with that of the Christian dispensation and most powerfully illustrating its fundamental doctrines." (OP. cit., 33).

Well aware of the Gita's universal bearing, Hastings included a prophetic expression in his preface:

"The writers of the Indian philosophies will survive when the British Dominion in India shall long have ceased to exist, and when the sources which it yielded of wealth and power are lost to remembrance."

As one scholar has written:

"No text could, by its profound metaphysics and by the prestige of its poetic casting, more irresistibly shake the hold of the tradition of a superior race." (Raymond Schwab, The Oriental Renaissance: Europe's Discovery of India and the East, 1680-1880, New York: Columbia University Press, 1984, 161)

Wilkins also became Librarian of the East India Company's London library in 1799. As a leading Indologist in charge of the famous India Office Library, Wilkins collected a large number of manuscripts from India; these formed its core collection. (OP. cit., 34-35). His Grammar of the Sanskrit Language was printed from London (after a fire consumed his press) in 1808. In 1815, he also published Radicals of the Sanskrit Language containing verb roots, in London. Students of Sanskrit welcomed both grammars. He played a leading role in the formation of London's Royal Society of Great Britain and Ireland. His contributions to the research of the Asiatic Society of Bengal are memorable. The essence of Hindu thought, as elegantly and concisely put forth in the Bhagavad-Gita, was disseminated throughout all of Europe thanks to Wilkins' translation. His Gita was later translated into all major languages and reached a universal audience.

  Part 2 of this article. For other parts of this article, see How Vedanta Came to the West

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1. The Vedanta Society of New York -- A Brief History, 2000
2. Mahabharat--Katha (Bengali), 1998
3. Ramayan Anudhyan (Bengali), 1996
4. Healthy Values of Living, 1996
5. Meditation on Swami Vivekananda, 1994
6. Meditation on Shri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda, 1993
7. Albert Einstein and His Human Face, 1993
8. Glimpses of Great Lives, 1989
9. Shubha Chinta (Bengali), 1988
10. Smaran--Manan (Bengali), 1987

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