The Song Celestial
trans. Sir Edwin Arnold · 1885
4.8 · 8 ratings
About the book
The Bhagavad Gita in Victorian blank verse: a warrior sits down between two armies and refuses to fight, and a god spends eighteen chapters answering him. Arnold's rendering is the one Gandhi said first showed him his own scripture.
Try the short course
Part 1 · The warrior who put down his bow. The first six slides, free.
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The poem opens far from the fighting. A blind old king asks his minister what is happening on the plain of Kurukshetra, and everything we hear comes to us through that report. Two armies of one royal family are drawn up. Conches roar, drums and gongs burst out, and the earth seems to shake.
Then Prince Arjuna does something small. He asks his charioteer, Krishna, to drive him into the open ground between the two lines. He wants a closer look at the men he will have to kill that day.
That is the whole setup of the most loved spiritual dialogue in India: a soldier who, a moment before the battle, asks to see his enemies up close.
Inside the course
12 parts- Arjuna lays down his bow between two waiting armiesFree above
- Krishna's first answer: the soul does not die
- The yoga of action — work without clinging to the fruit
- Renouncing works, and doing them anyway
Questions
Is The Song Celestial free to read in Astra Trainer?
Yes. The full book opens free in the app’s reader, in English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, and Russian.
What is the short course?
12 short parts that walk through the book’s key ideas in slides, each with a quick quiz. The first six slides are free to try on this page.
Where do I get the app?
Astra Trainer is free on the App Store and Google Play. The Song Celestial is waiting in the app’s library.
