Chapter 1, Arjuna's Dilemma, Bhagvad- Gita: Treatise of Self- help

Bhagavad-Gita is the most beautiful, perhaps the only true philosophical song existing in any known tongue’ – William von Humboldt.  

In this the beauty of the Sanskrit slokas is reflected in the rhythmic flow of the English verse of poetic proportions even as the attendant philosophy of the Gita is captured in contemporary idiom for easy comprehension.         

Though it is a matter of consensus that Bhagvad-Gita in the present length of seven hundred slokas has many an interpolation to it, but no meaningful attempt has ever been made to delve into the nature and extent, not to speak of the effect of these on the Hindu society at large.

The moot point that has missed the attention of all, all along, is that if the Sudras were to be so lowly in the Lord’s creation, how come then the Gita’s architect Krishna, His avatar, and Vyāsa, its chronicler, happen to be from the same lowly Hindu caste fold. Moreover, is it not absurd to suggest that either or both of them had deprecated the station of their own varna (caste) on their own in their very own Gita?

The methodical codification of interpolations carried out here puts the true character of the Gita in proper perspective. Identified here are hundred and ten slokas of deviant nature and or of partisan character, the source of so much misunderstanding about this book extraordinary, in certain sections of the Hindu fold.

In the long run, exposing and expunging these mischievous insertions is bound to bring in new readers from these quarters to this over two millennia old classic besides altering the misconceptions of the existing adherents.