Hinduism · Texts & transmission
The Bhagavad Gita enters the epic tradition
c. 200 BCE–100 CE
The Bhagavad Gita developed within the Mahabharata as a dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna. Its teaching brought reflection on self and reality into conversation with devotion, action, and duty, presenting several paths through a warrior’s crisis on the battlefield.
Why it matters
Its setting makes philosophical questions about knowledge and liberation inseparable from decisions about responsibility, allegiance, and how a person should act.
About the date
Scholarly composition range; not the date of the narrated battle.