THE BHAKTI SUTRA:
CONCISE TEACHINGS OF NARADA ON SACRED LOVE
to be published by Columbia University Press
(forthcoming 2008)


This work can be described in the briefest terms as consisting of an elaborate introduction to and translation of and commentary on the Sanskrit text of the Bhakti Sütra of Narada, one of the world's outstanding literary works on the philosophy of love from the Hindu devotional traditions of Vaishnavism. The aphorisms or terse phrases of the sütra are translated in a way that is intended to be an eloquent, literal and accurate "incarnation" of the original.

Among the many themes of the book, the primary one is essentially a discussion about and description of the state of being in love with God. Other themes addressed: The nature of pure love; the differences between worldly love and spiritual love; the signs of pure love in human emotion and behavior; the variety of ways to love God; the nature of the passionate love for God; how to be transfixed in love of God while in this world; how to cultivate pure love; the nature of the grace of God and saintly devotees; the nature of mixed devotion and exclusive, selfless devotion, et. al.

The structure of the original text is simply a "string" (sütra) of 84 very terse word phrases or short texts drenched with meaning and significance. I have sectioned off these eighty-four aphorisms into four major parts and twenty subsections, as I have spelled out below in the table of contents, in an attempt to assist the reader's understanding of the text. While the translation can stand on its own and be read and understood by itself, I will provide an elaborate introduction to the Sutra and a commentary following the Sutra.


BHAGAVAD GITA CONCORDANCE:
COMPREHENSIVE WORD REFERENCE
WITH ENGLISH AND SANSKRIT INDEXES
to be published by Columbia University Press
(forthcoming 2008)


A concordance, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is defined as the following: "an alphabetical list of the words (esp. the important ones) present in a text, usually with citations of the passages concerned: a concordance to the Bible." This work would be seen as the best or only comprehensive reference for any translation of a world famous text, and thus it would be marketed to virtually every major college or university library, and major public libraries in India, the US, and abroad. Individuals who would purchase this reference work would be in the academic fields of religion, specifically world religions or Asian religions, especially South Asian religious traditions and Hinduism, and the serious student of the Bhagavad Gita.

It is almost inconceivable that the Bhagavad Gita (BG) has not received its own truly comprehensive concordance, given that so many of the truly great literary masterpieces of world literature have concordance reference works for them. For example, there are concordances to the poetic works of authors such as John Milton, Emily Dickinson, Pushkin, Ben Johnson, Joseph Brodsky, Sir Philip Sidney, Hart Crane, Theodore Roethke, Baudelaire, D.H. Lawrence, Langson Hughes, Samuel Johnson, Edgar Allen Poe, Robert Frost, John Keats, even The Beatles. There are about three concordances to the works of Shakespeare, including the Harvard Shakespeare Concordance, by Marvin Spevak. The BG consists of about 700 verses of Sanskrit poetry, one of the most famous poems in world literature, and yet there is no true concordance to this work.

The writings of Jonathan Swift, George Herbert, Jean De La Fontaine, Henry James, Hemingway, Melville, Dickens, and Proust, have all received concordances, even Stephen King. Ironically, both Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau (Walden) wrote works in which a deep appreciation of the BG, and their works have received concordances, but not the BG.

Other scriptural texts have received concordances. There are well over a dozen concordances to the Bible. There is a concordance for the I-Ching, the Book of Mormon, and there are at least three for the Qur'an, but not one for the BG. There is a Vedic Concordance, by Maurice Bloomfield, and even a concordance for the Gita Govinda by Jayadeva, Le Gitagovinda de Jayadeva: texte, concordance, et index, by Henri Quellet! However, a comprehensive concordance for the Bhagavad Gita has never been produced.

The Bhagavad Gita is one of the greatest literary and spiritual treasures of the world. The BG is the most popular and famous work in all of India and, to the West, it is the most well-known of all Indian literary works. More than eighty complete translations of the text in English from the Sanskrit have been produced over the past few centuries. Numerous partial translations of the BG into English have been produced as well. All of these add up to well over one hundred. Moreover, scholars in the West continue to re translate this important text.

The sheer number of translations of the BG that have been produced and that will continue to be produced demonstrates not only the challenges this text presents in conveying its powerful message to the Western English speaking reader, but also presents the need for textual tools that can aid in the understanding of this great work, a comprehensive reference work that can aid the student of the BG in the use of any of its translations. The need for an exhaustive concordance that can be used in conjunction with any good translation of the text is obvious.

A thoroughgoing reference to the Bhagavad Gita for the English-speaking world, as described herein, has never existed. Many of my colleagues have expressed a need for such a reference for their teaching and even in their own work. Even computer word searches of the Sanskrit text will not produce the complete results possible with the work proposed herein. There is no way by which even the specialist can anticipate those variations of verbs and their prefixed and noun forms that would be listed far from their original root spellings. Thus when looking for words related to dharma, the negative form "a-dharma", appearing in five places, is easily identified and located in the Sanskrit Word Index. The words "adharma" and "dharma" are not in close proximity to each other in the listing within the concordance. Even if the computer search would identify letter sequences within words to find these two, which is commonly possible in computer searches, internal sandhi changes of verbal forms will not be identifiable and therefore will remain hidden, such as the related verb form "jåyate" to its closely related noun form "janma" or a prefixed form of the derivative "abhijåyate". Furthermore, the word-contexts within quarter verse phrases are immediately gathered in sequential order of appearance for easy reference.