India: Buddhists Vs Hindus

A History of Mankind (247)

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The Bhagavad Gita incorporates into its seven hundred verses many contradictory ideas, as well as a corrective to the popular idea of karma, as it asserts that any action is not contaminated by its unintended consequences and thus only pure intentions truly matter.

This was a a key notion that was sure to commend Vedic ideas to masses who were very aware of the loose ends that one’s acts leave all over; the other key idea in the Gita is that the benefits obtained through meditation are superior to those obtained through action.

Eventually, Indian tradition transformed the Gita into a pacifist tract. However, the fact remains that this is a blood-thirsty epic that, drawing upon the Upanishads as every other part of the Vedic tradition, insists on the need to adhere to one’s duties and, thus, uphold the caste system, in direct contradiction with Buddhist ideals. Much later, British colonizers liked the Gita because they saw it as an anti-idolatrous work in which they correctly saw Greek (or, more precisely, Indo-European) undertones¹.