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EDITORIAL  Review Of Swami Tripurari's Bhagavad-Gita BY PHIL CATALFO EDITORIAL, Jul 13 (VNN) — Review of Swami Tripurari's Bhagavad-Gita: Its Feeling and Philosophy Recent Seasons have brought a number of new books translating or commenting on the Bhagavad Gita, the seminal text that contains one of the earliest relgiious and philosophical expressions of yoga. But the most arresting new Gita to cross my desk in the past year is Swami B.V. Tripurari's Bhagavad Gita: Its Feeling and Philosophy, a 600-page tome that fairly oozes Hindu (and Sanskrit) scholarship. While Tripurari's rendering is perhaps not as copious as that of, say, Paramahamsa Yogananda (whose two-volume God Talks with Arjuna offers more than 40 pages of commentary on the Gita's first verse), it is still quite comprehensive. For one thing, for each of the Gita's 700 verses, it provides the Devanagari script, an English transliteration, a word-by-word translation of the Sanskrit, and a finished English translation--al of which is then followed by a lenghty discourse on the context and meaning of the verse (including its place in the larger continuity of the Mahabharata, the epic of which the Gita is but a part). Tripurari, a disciple of the late A.C. Bhaktivedanta, founder of the Krishna consciousness movement (and himself a notable modern proumlgator of the Gita), knows his Hindu cosmology inside-out; indeed, some readers may find themselves overwhelment with references to deities, lineages, and tenets that may be familiar only to a few. But those willing to undertake the long journey through his profuse text will find it a rewarding one, for Tripurari provides abundant footnotes and citations explaining obscure terminology or references, the end result being a kind of postgraduate course in the cultural, metaphysical, and spiritual teachings inherent in this ancient treasure. Phil Catalfo, Yoga Journal THE BHAGAVAD GITA: Its Feeling and Philosophy by Swami B.V. Tripurari, Mandala Publishing; (415) 460-6112; http://www.mandala.org. Contact VNN about this story  Send this story to a friend
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