Invitation to World Religions

The Teachings of Hinduism  123

life, also presents radical new ideas about the pursuit of moksha, including the three margas or paths to liberation that we explored in an earlier section. The Gita begins with Arjuna refusing to act on his dharma, as is demanded of a member of the kshatriya, or warrior class, out of fear of the consequences of killing his kinsmen. Krishna responds to his dilemma by revealing that one does not need to give up action to achieve moksha. Rather, as we noted before, one gives up the fruit of action. That is, one cultivates “desireless action,” or acting without attachment to the fruit or benefit of the action. Arjuna must honor his dharma as a warrior and fight his own kinsmen. But he transcends the karmic repercus- sions of this act by relinquishing personal attachment and realizing that Krishna is the primary cause leading all the individual actors toward this inevitable outcome.

As you have seen in the earlier section on bhakti marga, the Gita emphasizes the path of devotion, which later comes to dominate Hindu practice and belief. The Gita also teaches that it is possible to achieve moksha by being active in the world, provided that, through selfless devo- tion, one surrenders attachment to the expectation of any particular result. This contrasts with earlier teachings that advocated complete detachment through renunciation as the primary means of es- caping samsara. Puranas  In addition to the rich storehouse of narrative material in the epics, there are equally important collections of mythic stories known as Puranas (Sanskrit purana , “ancient”). Like the epics, the Puranas existed in oral form before being committed to writing—in this case, between the fourth and sixteenth centuries. The Puranas contain useful historical data, such as the genealogies of regional kings, but they also reflect the rise of dualistic or devotional Hinduism. This is evident primarily in their narrations of the deeds of the great deities such as Shiva, Vishnu, and Devi. They also consider the genealogies of gods, rules governing the proper worship of the gods, the construction of temples, the observance of festivals, the undertaking of pilgrimages, and similar topics. There are eighteen major Puranas, two of the most influential of which are the Bhagavata Purana and the Markandeya Purana . The Bhagavata Purana focuses on Vishnu and his incarnations, most especially Krishna. It is one of the most widely recited, performed, and studied texts in contemporary Hinduism. The tenth book, which serves as the primary source for Krishna’s life story, is particularly important. The battle scene in the Mahabharata is the setting of the Bhagavad Gita . PROPERTY OF OXFORD Krishna, in the guise of Arjuna’s charioteer, counsels the warrior on the verge of battle against his kinsmen.

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