Shrimad-Bhagavad-Gita

Why one more translation of the Gita?


This book is a faithful translation of the Gita in simple English. The reader will find that frequent use of comma has made this translation easier to follow. This translator has retained many of the traditional Sanskrit words, like dharma, even in English translation. This is because such words are difficult to translate: the translation in such cases is far from accurate, and, in fact, can even be misleading. To overcome this problem, this translator has given separate explanatory notes for such words, instead of merely giving their common translation.


The other problem arises from the fact that in Sanskrit, a single word like brahman can have several different meanings. Here again, this translation of the Gita faithfully gives different traditional translations and meanings in their proper context and perspective.


Lastly, both the Sanskrit text and its Roman transliteration have been presented after separating almost every word by removing all euphonic junctions of final and initial letters (sandhi), also called the phonetic combinations of words. This has increased readability of the text tremendously. Thus, this book takes care of the common as well as special problems that a reader encounters during his study of the Gita.


In addition, much useful relevant information given in several helpful indexes and the appendices in this compilation will make reading the Gita easier and more interesting. After all, the Gita is meant to be studied by all.


In this book, the original text of the Gita has been reproduced in Sanskrit. For the benefit of the readers who do not read the devanagari (Sanskrit) script, the entire Gita has also been reproduced in Roman transliteration scheme.