The purpose of writing this book is to make available to English-knowing readers, an easyto-read version of Anu-Gita. Although Anu-Gita is an important part of the Maha-bharata, it has so far not been presented in a simple form to common people, with the result that most people do not even know that such a book exists. The prefix 'Anu' denotes 'after', so Anu-Gita literally means 'Gita occuring after'. In the Mahabharata, Bhagavat-Gita occurs in Parva No. 14. (In all, there are 18 Parvas in the Mahabharata).
It is well known that the Gita was taught by Lord Krishna to Arjuna on the battle field of Kuruksetra. So it was a time of crisis at the time of Anu-Gita. In fact, the Mahabharata war was over and peace was established in the Kingdom, under the rule of Yudhisthira (whom every one including Arjuna supported).
But the format of Anu-Gita is different from that of the Gita. In the Gita, there was dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna. On the other hand, in Anu-Gita, Krishna makes use of three ancient dialogues. Because of this, Anu-Gita has a lot of repetitions, which have made it longer than the Gita. For example, Anu-Gita has thirty-six chapters (compared to eighteen chapters in the Gita), and 1040 shlokas (compared to 700 shlokas in the Gita). In order to present Anu-Gita in an easy-to-read version, the authors have omitted the repetitions, and have selected 400 shlokas. But they have retained all the main teachings of Anu-Gita. |
