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Alladi Mahadeva Sastry (Translator)
The Bhagavad Gita with the Commentary of Sri Sankaracharya

534 pages
published by Samata Books, Madras
ISBN 0910261032

Sri Sankaracharya's is the earliest extant commentary on the Bhagavad Gita. He explained the need for his commentary thus:

"This famous Gita-Sastra is an epitome of the essentials of the whole Vedic teaching; and its meaning is very difficult to understand. Though, to afford a clear view of its teaching, it has been explained word by word and sentence by sentence, and its import critically examined by several commentators, still I have found that to the laity it appears to teach diverse and quite contradictory doctrines. I propose, therefore, to write a brief commentary with a view to determine its precise meaning."

The text of the Gita as cited by Sankara has come down the centuries as the authentic text and this commentary of his has proved to be of seminal value ever since.

This book contains the original Sanskrit text of the Gita in Devanagari followed by its translation as also the translation of Sankara's Gita Bhashya in English by Alladi Mahadeva Sastri. The Translation has stood the test of time since its first publication in 1897, being one of the best available English translations of Sankaracharya's commentary. The footnotes added to the text are mostly extracted from Anandagiri's Tika, which is clear and most to the point for a proper understanding of some important portions of the Bhashya.

Alladi Mahadeva Sastry, (the savant), was born in May 1861 at Pudur, Andhra, India. He had his education in Telugu, Sanskrit and the traditional recitation of the Vedas in his village. He graduated from Presidency College, Madras in 1883 and continued his study of Sanskrit. He became a teacher at Vellore High School and at the Hindu High School, Nellore, till he assumed charge as the first Curator of the Mysore Oriental Library in May 1891. He joined the Adyar Library as Director of its Oriental section in 1916 and retired a few months before his death.

Swami Vivekananda once wrote to him: «The Gita-Bhashya, in the opinion of many, is the most difficult of the Acharya's works, and I am glad to find that you have undertaken a most difficult task and performed it so well.»

Last Updated Friday, December 25, 1998