Customer Reviews

Bhagavad Gita: A New Translation

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I really like Stephen Mitchell's work, but it's important to know what you're getting.

What you're ordinarily _not_ getting is a straight-up translation of the source text; you're getting Mitchell's attempt to render the source text into a fine English poem that expresses the spiritual insights he wants it to express. (Examples: his excellent interpretive renderings of the Psalms and the Tao Te Ching. They are excellent interpretive renderings; they are _not_ translations.)

Even when the translation _is_ straightforward, he tends to chop the text to bits and just keep the parts he agrees with. (Examples: his translation of the book of Genesis, which includes the entire text but relegates the "spiritually suspect" parts to an appendix, and his rendering of the book of Job, which includes some terrific translation but omits the speech of Elihu and the poem in praise of wisdom.)

And now he's done the Bhagavad Gita. Has he translated it, or has he interpretively rendered it?

Well, the first point to make is that he _has_ included the entire text and limited himself to offering commentary on the parts he doesn't agree with. (Incidentally, I tend to disagree with the same parts and I understand that there have been Hindu scholars who have at least raised the same questions that Mitchell does.) This point alone means that Mitchell's Gita is a landmark: he hasn't chopped up the text in order to leave out the "spiritually inferior" portions.

So how good is his translation? Well, Mitchell says his own Sanskrit is "rudimentary," but that doesn't mean (as some reviewers seem to think) that he doesn't know any at all. (This is a bit different from his Tao Te Ching, in which he admits that he just doesn't read Chinese.) And this _is_ called a "new translation" rather than a "new interpretation."

But I don't know any Sanskrit at all, so I've just done some short comparisons with other translations. Based on spot-checks against the versions of Barbara Stoller Miller and Juan Mascaro, it looks to me as though Mitchell has stayed pretty close to the source. This is of course not an expert opinion of any kind and I'm prepared to be corrected by anyone who knows better. (And it may not even be much of a test, as Miller's translation in particular was one of the handful Mitchell consulted in preparing his own.)

Either way, what Mitchell is up to here is what he's up to nearly everywhere: he uses the traditional text as a medium to convey his own spiritual insights. And it's pretty clear from the get-go that he regards Lao-Tzu (i.e., _his_ Lao-Tzu) as spiritually superior to the author(s) of the Gita. Some readers may well agree with this evaluation (and I may be one of them; you guess). But all readers should be aware that Mitchell isn't trying to present a reverent discussion of the teachings of the Gita; he's sifting through it to see what parts of it measure up to his own Buddhist-Taoist-Jewish insights.

I am _not_ criticizing this enterprise; far from it. I tend to agree with many of Mitchell's insights, I really really really enjoy his poetic renderings, and on the whole I even admire his chutzpah (although in other books I've seen reason to criticize some of his scholarship). And in the present work he does, for example, raise (and to some extent answer) deep questions about the limits of nonviolence.

But, y'know, caveat emptor and all that. If you buy this book, buy it as Stephen Mitchell's work, not as an introduction to Hinduism through one of its central sacred texts. It's not really fair to describe this as a "boutique" Gita, but on the other hand it _is_ primarily a vehicle for Mitchell himself. I think that, like all of Mitchell's stuff, it's well worth reading and owning, but it depends on what you're looking for.

First of all this is a beautiful book. The design by Barbara Sturman in which the text is presented in a handsome wine/purple font set in wide margins with the chapter titles in a contemporary font of soft vermillion suggests reverence for the Gita while hinting of a twenty-first century Western appreciation. There is a ribbon sown into the binder for keeping your place.

Second, the emphasis is on the text of the Gita itself garlanded by Mitchell's brief introduction and his "About the Translation" and a most appropriate and valuable appendix, "The Message of the Gita" by Mohandas K. Gandhi from his Collected Works.

Third, there is the translation itself, which is poetic and easily accessible to the contemporary reader without diluting the sacred essence of this great work of spirituality. Mitchell, who has had extensive experience rendering poetic and spiritual works into English, including a much-admired translation of the Tao Te Ching, worked hard at fusing "the dignity of formal verse" into a "sound like natural speech" (p. 32). Rather than go through torturous artificialities in trying to fit all of the text into metric lines, Mitchell has chosen to present some of the Gita in prose. Thus the opening chapter, which he calls "Arjuna's Despair," in which the scene is set and the participants identified, is gracefully told in prose, as is the introduction of the second chapter until Krishna speaks. The effect is beautiful, since it highlights the importance of what Krishna is about to say in a speech that really begins the poem and the teaching. (Shakespeare used this technique.)

Mitchell has solved the problem of the word "yoga," a long time bugaboo for English translators of the Gita, by sometimes using "yoga" and sometimes using "discipline." I certainty appreciate his discretion, having been annoyed for years by those translators who use only "discipline," a word that in many instances misleads the reader and muddies the text with exactly the wrong meaning and connotation. Restricting himself to the word "discipline" alone, as Mitchell explains, "would be an impoverishment." He adds, "how could one expect the reader to keep a straight face at the image of Krishna as the <Lord of Discipline>?" (p. 33). Krishna is indeed the Lord of Yoga.

Mitchell does not attempt to translate some other terms, like "guna," because, "Attempts to find English equivalents...have been uniformly unsuccessful and confuse more than they clarify" (p. 33). Anyone versed in yoga knows that the gunas--sattva, rajas, and tamas--represent something close to an entire philosophy and cannot be understood without some study. The usual rendering as "qualities" or "strands" is tolerable, but, as Mitchell indicates, impoverished, and sometimes leads to a misrepresentation of the text. (See especially 13.21 and compare it with other translations and to the gloss of Sankara, which can be found in the translation by Swami Nikhilanada (1979) published by the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, and elsewhere.) However not all scholars agree with this. Kees Bolle in his translation (1979), published by the University of California Press, insists that "words like <yoga>, <moksa>, and <brahman> must be translated" (p. 226). His concluding essay, "On Translating the Bhagavadgita" is a sharp, candid, and entertaining discussion of some of the problems that translators face.

Where Mitchell runs afoul of some readers is in his worldly attitude toward the Gita as revealed in the introduction, where he uses a story by Borges and a reminiscence by Robert J. Oppenheimer to make a couple of points. He also assumes a somewhat Taoist position. To those not conversant with the Tao Te Ching, Mitchell's statement on page 30, "The healthiest way to begin reading and absorbing a text like the Bhagavad Gita is to understand that ultimately it has nothing to teach," is definitely off-putting. To me Mitchell's position is not a detriment and indeed the only proper stance for a translator is secular. The Gita is a sacred work to Hindus and yogis and others, but to people who practice other religions and who have been raised in other traditions, the Gita, while a great poetic and spiritual work, has to take its place alongside the Bible, the Tao Te Ching, the Koran and other religious works. To others, the Gita is, as it was to T.S. Eliot, simply a great philosophical poem. (Eliot considered it second to Dante's the Divine Comedy.)

Mitchell may also startle some uncritical readers of the Gita with his argument in a footnote on pages 200-202 that the last six chapters are not of the same quality as chapters 1-12. He sees a difference in attitude and finds the last six chapters "much inferior...both poetically and spiritually." I tend to agree, but all venerable religious works are uneven and contain different voices. It is also true that the Gita is repetitious to some extent (although that is not necessarily to its disadvantage as a didactic scripture), and even seemingly contradictory. I believe this is an unavoidable consequence of being complex and of having been passed down through many generations both before and after it was written down.

To those who might find Mitchell not completely qualified to bring yet another translation of the Gita into the English-speaking world because, as he admits on page 30, his "knowledge of Sanskrit is rudimentary," I can only say, his is a fine tradition. I am thinking of the poet W. B. Yeats, who also without much Sanskrit, but with the help of Shree Purohit Swami, wrote a beautiful translation of The Ten Principal Upanishads (1937), and of Christopher Isherwood, also without much Sanskrit, but with the help of Swami Prabhavananda, published a graceful rendition of the Gita (1944).

Bottom line: this is a beautiful and valuable book that would enhance anyone's library, and I recommend it highly.

I am mesmerized as I read this book and find within it the common thread that joins all the great holy books of the world. It is beautifully put together and written in such a fashion that it is a pleasure read. I was concerned about another reviewer's comments about this being an "interpretation" rather than a "translation" of the Gita, and so I sat down and compared several chapters of this book to the translation by Sir Edwin Arnold is a more standard treatment of this text. I found that Stephen Mitchell's version was much more readable and understandable, and yet did not take anything away from the authenticity of the actual text. For anyone wishing to take a slightly different path leading to the nearness to God, I highly recommend picking up this book.

Over the years I have tried to read the Bhagvad Gita in English, but did not find any good translations that held my interest. While I knew the story, and the underlying philosophy of the book, I often found it a bit disconcerting that I could completely comprehend the sanksrit stanzas.

Mitchell has taken some liberties with this great epic poem, but the end result is a beautiful rendition of the Gita, and I have read and re-read many of the chapters repeatedly marvelling at the clarity and simplicity of Mitchell's rendition of this great epic.

I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who want to know more about the Gita and its underlyng philosophy.

Remarkable how Mr Mitchell liberates this book from the bondage of Indian philosophy and shows it as the mystical and universal text it needs to be. And with remarkable restraint he represents a universal poem of love to the divine without the western baggage of religiousity and pomp. So there are two qualities to enjoy in this book which put it above other translations.

In the context of 21st century publishing, Mitchell's position is almost unique in having translated and rendered a universal core of spiritual literature. The positioning this book seems pure hearted to me, as part of Mitchell's own seeking, and part of what he has to share to the world. So it is deep in that sense.

But some passages left me puzzled. I know a little bit of sanskrit, much less no doubt than this translator, but specific passages of American will not yield the same nuances of the original language no matter how you twist them, nor will the readership tolerate graceless translations of this luminous poem. It just won't fit into the words!

So the problem if any is between different readerships, the traditional and the modern especially.

The text is beautiful and deep and lovely. I read it over a large coffee in a Borders cafe, then twice at home over the next three days, so its simplicity is not to be doubted. The book really is all it promises to be: a new translation for an open minded readership wishing to gain a quick acquaintence with a deep book. And it works wonders there. Other translations have taken days to read a few chapters at a time and this is so easy to read and digest.

One gripe is that he refers to the female readership in his introduction, because of the male orientation of Krishna's advice. I don't know that this piece of political correctness adds anything at all to the book's timeless quality. When a poem speaks for all humanity for all time, does Mitchell need to concern himself with the lack of a reference to the feminine gender in the text? Surely women can tolerate a few "he" and "his" without threatening their humanism. Frankly I would prefer the next edition delete this from the introduction.

I love this book and intend to read it many times over. I don't think it suffers from Mitchell's universalist spirituality, nor do I think it will go out of print for many years to come, because it is beautifully packaged, lucid to the point of transparency, and appropriately contextualised for the global spirituality of the 21st century.

I highly recommend it.

I've been reading the Bhagavad Gita for almost 30 years. I compared this translation with several I have at home and was surprise with the quality and how the translator used poetry conveying in a precise manner the meaning of the Gita.
Some people complained in other reviews that the "translation cannot be a good one since the translator is not a religious person himself" (how do they know? just because he is not a HareKrishna or other religious group member?). Another reader accused him of trying to make an easy buck with this translation (Have you ever tried to translate the Gita in a poem form? Do you have any idea of the amount of work involved?) I really don't care about it.
This book is a good translation and a good poem.

One of the things that irritated me about his particular "translation" was the fact that Mitchell admits in the book that he has a knowledge of only "rudimentary Sanskrit". If this is true, then I cannot have much faith in his "tranlsation". Still, to anyone who has read any of the other recent translations, there will be little of surprise here. Although Mitchell may not know Sanskrit, he apparently has relied on someone who does in order to get this "translation of a translation". One of the things that he mentions in this book that I agree with is that the first 12 chapers of the Gita and the last 6 chapters were written by different authors. In the first two thirds of the book, we see a kind, loving Krishna accepting all who try to reach him in any way they are able . . . even the sinful are seen as having a divine spark at their heart. This seems more in keeping with the earlier, Upanishadic tradition of advaita. The latter part of the book seems to have been written by some Samkhya philosopher bent upon classifyng everything according to the doctrine of the three Gunas. The latter part of the book is boring, repetitive, and seems to be on a considerably lower level than the rest of the book. Instead of the universal Krishna, we now have the angry god casting down the "evil" men again and again into infamy and who regards certain people as inherently demonic -- a stark contrast form the beginning chapters. Also of not is Gandhi's essay of Ahimsa and his view of how the Gita does not actually condone violence, but makes use of a war in order to present its message more clearly. Gandhi is not totally convincing in this, but it does provide a good counterpoint to those who use it as an excuse for violence and oppression in the name of god. Mitchell aslo quotes Thoreau in mentioning that Krishna's exhortations of Arjuna to fight are usually illogical and inconvincing. Although not a scholarly work, the introductory and concluding commentary do bring up some important points.

After having read this three times I can say that Stephen Mitchell provides the reader with a wonderful introduction to Indic thought. Some poetic license is taken in the translation, and some verses seem to be more fabrication than translation, but overall this is a great place to start. The book might be rather simplistic for the more well versed reader, but the beginner will find it rather useful. Well done.

What are you guys talking about? This translation is stunningly poetic. I have read three different versions of the Gita, including the overhyped Bhagvad Gita As It Is(which, by the way, isn't really as it is)

Hello everyone, here you're getting a review from a 19 year old christian. What business do I have with the Bhagavad Gita? Well, believe it or not, the book itself is an amazing one. Mr. Mitchell does a wonderful job of bringing it to colloquial life by putting it in a language which is approachable and digestable. However, I cannot help but feel that perhaps some of the subtleties of the Gita have been lost, but to a newcomer that's not a problem.

What I really loved about this book was that there was a great abundance of space left in the margins for notes. I had the room to comment, reference other spiritual/religious books, and even remind myself to keep in mind the modern scholar's outlook on troubling passages and the myriad of possible interpretations. I intend to use this version of the Gita at a local Gita discussion session held on the campus of the University of Kansas, as I have taken the time to study the book thoroughly and will have ample reflections, critiques, and questions in the margins for other students and children of God.

Truly a beautiful book: visually, dramatically and spiritually.