Page:Hindu Gods and Heroes.djvu/85

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THE BHAGAVAD-GĪTĀ
83

son the patriarch Manu; elsewhere in the Mahābhārata (XII. cccv. 19) the Sātvata teaching is said to have been announced by the Sun. Ghōra in his list of moral virtues enumerates "mortification, charity, uprightness, harmlessness, truthfulness"; exactly the same attributes, with a few more, are said in the Bhagavad-gītā to characterise the man who is born to the gods' estate (XVI. 1-3). Ghōra's exhortation to think of the nature of the Supreme in the hour of death is balanced by Kṛishṇa's words: "He who at his last hour, when he casts off the body, goes hence remembering me, goes assuredly into my being" (VIII. 5; cf. 10). These parallels are indeed not very close; but collectively they are significant, and when we bear in mind that the author of the Bhagavad-gītā is eager to associate his doctrine with those of the Upanishads, and thus to make it a new and catholic Upanishad for all classes, we are led to conclude that its fundamental ideas, sanctification of works (karma-yōga), worship of a Supreme God of Grace (bhakti) by all classes, and rejection of animal sacrifices (ahiṃsā) arose among the orthodox Kshatriyas, who found means to persuade their Brahmanic preceptors to bring it into connection with their Upanishads and embellish it with appropriate texts from those sources. Very likely Kṛishṇa Vāsudēva, if not the first inventor of these doctrines, was their most vigorous propagator.