Literally, the word Bhagavad-gita means the song (gita) of God (Bhagavan, changed to Bhagavat as an adjective). It is book-length wisdom about life and living in the form of a poem and is spoken by the supreme divinity, descended to earth as Krishna.

Textually, the Bhagavad-gita, which is often referred as the Gita in short, contains 700 verses, divided into 18 chapters. The Gita is a part of a much longer book, the Mahabharata, which is composed of some 110,000 verses and is widely considered the longest poem in world history. Literally, the Mahabharata means greater (maha) India (bharata); it is an epic narrative about the dramatic and often traumatic incidents in the life of the Bharata dynasty, after which India is named. This epic focuses on the generation of the Pandavas, five heroic brothers in that dynasty, specifically the challenges they faced from their cousins, the Kauravas, who wanted to be sole inheritors of the throne. The lifelong tension between these cousins culminated in a massive military confrontation at Kurukshetra. Just before that fratricidal war, one of the five Pandava brothers, Arjuna, archer par excellence, faced a crisis of conscience. Feeling overwhelmed by the enormity of the impending war and perplexed whether fighting was the right course of action, he turned for guidance to his friend, Krishna. 

Krishna had chosen to support Arjuna in the war by playing the non-combatant role of a charioteer. He is revealed in the Mahabharata to be the supreme divinity descended to earth; he had taken on the part of a prince, and main protector, in another powerful dynasty, the Yadu dynasty. Responding to Arjuna’s crisis, Krishna changed his role from charioteer to counselor and spoke the Gita, whose 18 chapters form chapters 23 to 40 in the Mahabharata’s sixth book-length section, known as Bhishma-parva. In the Gita, Krishna provided an inclusive worldview that placed Arjuna’s concerns in a broader context. He addressed universal questions about the purpose of life and the ways of living that can best infuse life with enduring meaning. It is this deliberation on timeless issues that has made the Gita one of the world’s greatest philosophical classics.