lected in the Bhagavad-gita. Ghora compares the
functions of life to the ceremonies of the _diksha_ (see above, p.68):
and this is at bottom the same idea as the doctrine of _karma-yoga_
preached again and again in the Bhagavad-gita. "Whatever be thy work,
thine eating, thy sacrifice, thy gift, thy mortification, make of it
an offering to me," says Krishna (IX. 27); all life should be regarded
as a sacrifice freely offered. Then Ghora continues: "In the hour of
death one should take refuge in these three thoughts: 'Thou art the
Indestructible, Thou art the Unfailing, Thou art instinct with
Spirit.' On this there are these two verses of the Rig-veda:

Thus upward from the primal seed
From out the darkness all around
We, looking on the higher light,
Yea, looking on the higher heaven,
Have come to Surya, god midst gods,
To him that is the highest light, the highest light."

In the Bhagavad-gita (IV. 1 ff.) Krishna announces that he preached
his doctrine to Vivasvan the Sun-god, who passed it on to his son the
patriarch Manu; elsewhere in the Mahabharata (XII. cccv. 19) the
Satvata teaching is said to have been announced by the Sun. Ghora in
his list of moral virtues enumerates "mortification, charity,
uprightness, harmlessness, truthfulness"; exactly the same attributes,
with a few more, are said in the Bhagavad-gita to characterise the man
who is born to the gods' estate (XVI. 1-3). Ghora's exhortation to
think of the nature of the Supreme in the hour of death is balanced by
Krishna's words: "He who at his last hour, when he casts off the body,
goes hence remembering me, goes assuredly into my being" (VIII. 5; cf.
10). These parallels are indeed not very close; but collectively they
are significant, and when we bear in mind that the author of the
Bhagavad-gita is eager to associate his doctrine with those of the
Upanishads, and thus to make it a new and catholic Upanishad for all
classes, we are led to conclude that its fundamental ideas,
sanctification of works (_karma-yoga_), worship of a Supreme God of
Grace (_bhakti_) by all classes, and rejection of animal sacrifices
(_ahimsa_) arose among the orthodox Kshatriyas, who found means to
persuade their Brahmanic preceptors to bring it into connection with
their Upanishads and embellish it with appropriate texts from those
sources. Very likely Krishna Vasudeva, if not the first inventor of
these doctrines, was their most vigorous propagator.

N