Abstract

Sometime after the famous fratricidal battle among the Bharatas known as the Mahābhārata war was over , Arjuna requested Krŗşņa… to repeat the instruction which had already been conveyed to him on ‘the holy field of Kurukşetra’ but which had gone out of his ‘degenerate mind’. Kŗşņa thereupon protests that he is not equal to a verbatim recapitulation of the Bhagavadgītā but agrees in lieu of that to impart to Arjuna the same instruction in other words, through the medium of a certain ancient story – or purātana itihāsa. And the instruction thus conveyed constitutes what is called the Anugītā, a name which is in itself an embodiment of this anecdote