141. Most texts read Yudhaya Yujyaswa. A manuscript belonging to a friend
of mine has the correction in red-ink, Yudhaya Yudhaya Yudhaywa. It
accords so well with the spirit of the lesson sought to be inculcated
here that I make no scruple to adopt it.

142. A life in this world that is subject to decay and death. So say all
the commentators.

143. What Krishna seeks to inculcate here is the simple truth that
persons who believe in the Vedas and their ordinances laying down
specific acts for the attainment of a heaven of pleasure and power,
cannot have the devotion without which there cannot be final emancipation
which only is the highest bliss. The performance of Vedic rites may lead
to heaven of pleasure and power, but what is that heaven worth? True
emancipation is something else which must be obtained by devotion, by
pure contemplation. In rendering Janma-Karma-phalapradam I have followed
Sankara. Sreedhara and other commentators explain it differently.

144. This sloka has been variously rendered by various translators. It is
the same that occurs in the Sanat-Sujata Parva of the Udyoga. (Vide
Udyoga Parva, Section XLV). Both Sreedhara and Sankara (and I may mention
Anandagiri also) explain it in this way. Shortly stated, the meaning is
that to an instructed Brahmana (Brahma-knowing person and not a Brahmana
by birth), his knowledge (of self or Brahma) teaches him that which is
obtainable from all the Vedas, just as a man wanting to bathe or drink
may find a tank or well as useful to him as a large reservoir of water
occupying an extensive area. Nilakantha explains it in a different way.

145. Srotavyasya Srutasyacha is literally 'of the hearable and the
heard', i.e., "what you may or will hear, and what you have heard."
European translators of the Gita view in these words a rejection of the
Vedas by the author. It is amusing to see how confidently they dogmatise
upon this point, rejecting the authority of Sankara, Sreedhara,
Anandagiri, and the whole host of Indian commentators. As K. T. Telang,
however, has answered the point elaborately, nothing more need be said
here.

146. One may abstain, either from choice or inability to procure them,
from the objects of enjoyment. Until, however, the very desire to enjoy
is suppressed, one cannot be said to have attained to steadiness of mind.
Of Aristotle's saying that he is a voluptuary who pines at his own
abstinence, and the Christian doctrine of sin being in the wi