Bhagavad‑gītā

Within the narrative of the Mahābhārata the Bhagavad‑gītā appears as a dialogic teaching delivered on the battlefield of Kurukṣetra when the warrior Arjuna falters and his charioteer Krishna (an avatāra of Viṣṇu) instructs him. Scholarly sources date the composition variously — commonly to the second or first century BCE, with both earlier (400–500 BCE) and later (1st century CE or beyond) estimates also proposed — and emphasize that the poem likely accreted within an oral tradition and became fixed within the canonical Mahābhārata over time.

Literarily the Gītā is a poem in dialogue form embedded in the Mahābhārata epic; it is presented as a series of chapters (traditionally each ending with the phrase 'Gītāsu Upaniṣatsu') in which Krishna answers Arjuna's doubts at the onset of war. As a text it functions as an Upaniṣad‑type teaching (hence its feminine grammatical treatment in Sanskrit) rather than as a liturgical manual; physically it exists in manuscript and printed forms as chaptered verse but the supplied sources focus on its narrative and doctrinal framing rather than on palaeographic details.

As a scripture the Bhagavad‑gītā 'does' several cultural and religious things: it synthesizes Vedic notions of dharma with sāṅkhya‑influenced yoga, jñāna (knowledge), and bhakti (devotion); it instructs how to perform one's duty (svadharma) without attachment to results and to attribute action to the divine; it praises disciplined yoga and knowledge as means of liberation while also valuing ethically situated action; and it functions pedagogically and allegorically, using the battlefield scene as a model for moral and existential struggle.