Sources & Copyright

Every translation on this site is in the public domain in both India and the United States — verified individually, not assumed. All commentary, simple translations, modern analogies, and practice notes are original work written for this project. Superscript numbers like [1] throughout the site point to the numbered works below.

  1. 1. Shankaracharya's commentary, trans. Alladi Mahadeva Sastry (1897)
  2. 2. Mohini M. Chatterji, The Bhagavad Gītā or The Lord's Lay (1887)
  3. 3. Monier-Williams, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary (1899)
  4. 4. Swami Swarupananda, Srimad Bhagavad Gita (1909)
  5. 5. Annie Besant & Bhagavan Das, The Bhagavad Gītā (1905)
  6. 6. William Quan Judge, The Bhagavad Gita (1890)
  7. 7. Sir Edwin Arnold, The Song Celestial (1885)
  8. 8. John Davies, The Bhagavad Gītā: The Sacred Lay (1882)
  9. 9. K.T. Telang, Sacred Books of the East Vol. 8 (1882)
  10. 10. B.G. Tilak, Gītā Rahasya (1915; Eng. trans. 1935 — referenced only) — Tilak's interpretation is discussed in our own words; the 1935 English translation's text is not reproduced (its US copyright runs until 2031).
  11. 11. Charles Johnston, The Songs of the Master (1908)
  12. 12. Swami Vivekananda, Complete Works Vol. 1 (1909 ed.)
  13. 13. K.M. Ganguli, The Mahabharata, Bhishma Parva (1883–96)
  14. 14. F. Max Müller, The Six Systems of Indian Philosophy (1899)
  15. 15. Paul Deussen, The Philosophy of the Upanishads (1908)

The Sanskrit text of the Bhagavad Gita itself is roughly two thousand years old and belongs to everyone. Where our source files lacked the Sanskrit, it was restored from the ancient text and verified word-by-word against our own annotations.