{"id":1669,"date":"2026-09-16T20:22:26","date_gmt":"2026-09-16T14:52:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dixith.com\/bhagavad-gita-iast\/"},"modified":"2026-10-18T02:35:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-17T21:05:13","slug":"bhagavad-gita-iast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dixith.com\/jeevana-sutra\/bhagavad-gita-iast\/","title":{"rendered":"\u015ar\u012bmad Bhagavad G\u012bt\u0101 in English IAST: All 18 Chapters"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u0cb2\u0cbf\u0caa\u0cbf \u00b7 \u0932\u093f\u092a\u093f\u0903 \u00b7 Script: \u0c95\u0ca8\u0ccd\u0ca8\u0ca1<\/a>  \u00b7  \u0938\u0902\u0938\u094d\u0915\u0943\u0924\u092e\u094d<\/a>  \u00b7  English IAST<\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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\u015ar\u012bmad Bhagavad G\u012bt\u0101<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Eighteen chapters, seven hundred verses. Not a book to finish at one sitting, but one to open again and again at different stages of life.
Tap any chapter card to open that chapter. Pages for all eighteen chapters are ready.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

\n

G\u012bt\u0101 Dhy\u0101nam<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

p\u0101rth\u0101ya pratibodhit\u0101\u1e43 bhagavat\u0101 n\u0101r\u0101ya\u1e47ena svaya\u1e43
vy\u0101sena grathit\u0101\u1e43 pur\u0101\u1e47amunin\u0101 madhye mah\u0101bh\u0101ratam |
advait\u0101m\u1e5btavar\u1e63i\u1e47\u012b\u1e43 bhagavat\u012bma\u1e63\u1e6d\u0101da\u015b\u0101dhy\u0101yin\u012b\u1e43
amba tv\u0101manusandadh\u0101mi bhagavadg\u012bte bhavadve\u1e63i\u1e47\u012bm ||<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read all ten dhyana verses with their meaning \u2192<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

1<\/span>Arjuna Vi\u1e63\u0101da Yoga<\/strong>
Arjuna’s collapse on seeing his own people ranged against him
47 verses<\/span>Read Chapter 1 \u2192<\/span><\/a>2<\/span>S\u0101\u1e45khya Yoga<\/strong>
The undying self, duty, and the marks of a steady mind
72 verses<\/span>Read Chapter 2 \u2192<\/span><\/a>3<\/span>Karma Yoga<\/strong>
Acting without clinging to the fruits of action
43 verses<\/span>Read Chapter 3 \u2192<\/span><\/a>4<\/span>J\u00f1\u0101na Karma Sa\u1e43ny\u0101sa Yoga<\/strong>
The purpose of the avatara, and seeing inaction in action
42 verses<\/span>Read Chapter 4 \u2192<\/span><\/a>5<\/span>Karma Sa\u1e43ny\u0101sa Yoga<\/strong>
Renouncing action and the yoga of action compared
29 verses<\/span>Read Chapter 5 \u2192<\/span><\/a>6<\/span>\u0100tma Sa\u1e43yama Yoga<\/strong>
Meditation and mastery of the mind
47 verses<\/span>Read Chapter 6 \u2192<\/span><\/a>7<\/span>J\u00f1\u0101na Vij\u00f1\u0101na Yoga<\/strong>
The nature of the divine and the ways of knowing it
30 verses<\/span>Read Chapter 7 \u2192<\/span><\/a>8<\/span>Ak\u1e63ara Brahma Yoga<\/strong>
Remembrance at the time of death, and the imperishable
28 verses<\/span>Read Chapter 8 \u2192<\/span><\/a>9<\/span>R\u0101javidy\u0101 R\u0101jaguhya Yoga<\/strong>
The most secret knowledge and the simplicity of devotion
34 verses<\/span>Read Chapter 9 \u2192<\/span><\/a>10<\/span>Vibh\u016bti Yoga<\/strong>
The divine glory seen in the world
42 verses<\/span>Read Chapter 10 \u2192<\/span><\/a>11<\/span>Vi\u015bvar\u016bpa Dar\u015bana Yoga<\/strong>
The cosmic form that Arjuna saw
55 verses<\/span>Read Chapter 11 \u2192<\/span><\/a>12<\/span>Bhakti Yoga<\/strong>
The marks of a devotee
20 verses<\/span>Read Chapter 12 \u2192<\/span><\/a>13<\/span>K\u1e63etra K\u1e63etraj\u00f1a Vibh\u0101ga Yoga<\/strong>
The body and the one who knows the body
34 verses<\/span>Read Chapter 13 \u2192<\/span><\/a>14<\/span>Gu\u1e47atraya Vibh\u0101ga Yoga<\/strong>
Sattva, rajas and tamas
27 verses<\/span>Read Chapter 14 \u2192<\/span><\/a>15<\/span>Puru\u1e63ottama Yoga<\/strong>
The ashvattha tree of worldly life, and the Supreme Person
20 verses<\/span>Read Chapter 15 \u2192<\/span><\/a>16<\/span>Daiv\u0101sura Sampad Vibh\u0101ga Yoga<\/strong>
The divine and the demonic natures
24 verses<\/span>Read Chapter 16 \u2192<\/span><\/a>17<\/span>\u015araddh\u0101traya Vibh\u0101ga Yoga<\/strong>
Three kinds of faith, food, austerity and giving
28 verses<\/span>Read Chapter 17 \u2192<\/span><\/a>18<\/span>Mok\u1e63a Sa\u1e43ny\u0101sa Yoga<\/strong>
The meaning of renunciation, and the conclusion of the Gita
78 verses<\/span>Read Chapter 18 \u2192<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n

|| o\u1e43 tat sat ||<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

About the Bhagavad Gita<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Three short readings: what the book is, why it is read, and the two paths it teaches. The Bhagavad Gita: an introduction<\/a> \u00b7 The greatness of the Bhagavad Gita<\/a> \u00b7 Two paths, and what they reach<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Bhagavad Gita: an introduction<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Where it stands, how it is built, and how it has been read<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where it stands<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The Bhagavad Gita is a dialogue of seven hundred verses inside the Bhishma Parva of the Mahabharata. Two armies stand ready at Kurukshetra. Arjuna asks Krishna, his charioteer, to halt the chariot between them. He sees his own grandfather, his teachers and his kinsmen on the other side, and he lays down his bow. What Krishna says to him then is the Bhagavad Gita.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We do not hear it directly. Sanjaya tells it to the blind king Dhritarashtra. Sanjaya can see the field because Vyasa has given him the sight. At the end he says that by the grace of Vyasa he heard this yoga from Krishna himself (18.75). So the book has two layers: words spoken in the middle of a battlefield, and a father sitting in a palace listening to them, whose sons are on that field.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What it calls itself<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

At the end of every chapter a colophon names the book. It calls the Bhagavad Gita an Upanishad, brahmavidya, \u2018the knowledge of Brahman\u2019, and yogashastra, \u2018the science of yoga\u2019, given as a dialogue between Sri Krishna and Arjuna. The name of every chapter ends in yoga, even the first, which has no teaching yet and ends in Arjuna\u2019s grief. The ten dhyana verses placed before the first chapter on these pages add a picture of their own: the Upanishads are cows, and the Bhagavad Gita is their milk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three groups of six<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

There is a long-standing way of reading the eighteen chapters as three groups of six. The first six give importance to karma yoga, the way of action. The middle six, the seventh to the twelfth, give it to bhakti yoga, the way of devotion. The last six, the thirteenth to the eighteenth, give it to jnana yoga, the way of knowledge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is a way of reading, not a wall. The second chapter, in the first group, speaks at length of the self that cannot be slain. The seventh, which opens the group on devotion, is named the yoga of knowledge and realisation. The eighteenth gathers all three. The grouping helps a reader see where the weight falls in each chapter, and all three ways are woven through the whole book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Metre and count<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Most verses are in the anushtubh metre: four quarters of eight syllables each, set as two lines. Some passages, such as the vision of the cosmic form in the eleventh chapter, are in the trishtubh metre, with eleven syllables to a quarter. Seven hundred is the count in common use. Some editions carry one more verse, a question from Arjuna, at the start of the thirteenth chapter. These pages follow the count of seven hundred.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The commentators<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The Upanishads, the Brahma Sutras and the Bhagavad Gita together form the prasthanatraya, the three foundational texts of Vedanta. So the teachers of each school of Vedanta have written commentaries on the Bhagavad Gita. Of the complete commentaries available today, Shankaracharya\u2019s is the oldest. Ramanujacharya and Madhvacharya read it from the standpoint of their own schools. In later centuries Sridhara Swami\u2019s Subodhini and Madhusudana Saraswati\u2019s Gudhartha Dipika became very influential.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In modern times Bal Gangadhar Tilak wrote the Bhagavad Gita Rahasya in Mandalay prison, and Gandhiji read the Bhagavad Gita as Anasakti Yoga, the yoga of non-attachment. In Kannada, D. V. Gundappa\u2019s Jeevana Dharma Yoga reads the Bhagavad Gita through the eyes of everyday life. That the same verse has been read differently by different commentators is part of the richness of the Bhagavad Gita.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The greatness of the Bhagavad Gita<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Why it is read again and again, and who may read it<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

More than words can hold<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

No one has managed to say in words all that the Bhagavad Gita is, and the old teachers did not claim to. The Lord himself calls it a secret, knowledge more secret than the secret (18.63). The essence of the Vedas is held to be gathered in it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Its language is simple. A little practice is enough to follow the Sanskrit, and many learn its verses by heart as children. Its meaning is another matter. A lifetime of study does not reach the end of it. A verse read for the hundredth time shows something it did not show before, and so the book never grows old. Read with a steady mind, with faith and with devotion, every word of it turns out to carry weight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every word a teaching<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Many books tell of the Lord, his nature, his power and his secret, but few as directly as the Bhagavad Gita, and most turn to the affairs of the world along the way. Here there is hardly a word that is not teaching. An old verse, which tradition gives to Vyasa, says it in two lines:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

g\u012bt\u0101 sug\u012bt\u0101 kartavy\u0101 kimanyai\u1e25 \u015b\u0101stravistarai\u1e25 |
y\u0101 svaya\u1e43 padman\u0101bhasya mukhapadm\u0101dvini\u1e25s\u1e5bt\u0101 ||<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018The Bhagavad Gita should be studied well: what need is there of the spread of other scriptures? It came from the lotus mouth of Padmanabha himself.\u2019 Sugita, \u2018well studied\u2019, means more than well recited. It means read with care, its meaning and its feeling taken in and kept in the heart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the end of the eighteenth chapter the Lord speaks of it himself. One who teaches it to the Lord\u2019s devotees will come to him, and no service is dearer to him. One who studies this dialogue worships the Lord with the sacrifice of knowledge. And even one who only listens to it, with faith and without envy, is freed and reaches the auspicious worlds of the righteous (18.68 to 18.71).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Open to everyone<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The Bhagavad Gita asks nothing about a reader\u2019s birth or station in life. What it asks for is a willing heart: devotion, the wish to listen and freedom from envy (18.67, 18.68), and faith in the one who hears (18.71). In 9.32 he names, one by one, those whom others might leave out: women, vaishyas, shudras, and those said to be of sinful birth. They too, he says, taking refuge in him, reach the highest goal. And in 18.46 he says that one who worships him through his own work finds perfection. Whatever a person\u2019s work, the way begins there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not only for renunciates<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Some who know only its name say the Bhagavad Gita is a book for sannyasis, and keep their children away from it, afraid that a son who studies it will leave home and become a renunciate. They have not looked at its first listener. Arjuna, in his confusion, was ready to give up his duty as a kshatriya and live on alms (2.5). After the teaching he did not take sannyasa. He took up his bow again, did his duty, and lived on in the world as a householder. How could the same book turn a child away from life?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So the better advice runs the other way. Those who want what is good should read the Bhagavad Gita with its meaning and its feeling, with their children and on their own: pathana, \u2018reading\u2019, and manana, \u2018turning it over in the mind\u2019. And then try, little by little, to live as it asks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The time we have<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Behind the advice is a sober thought. The old teachers say a human birth is hard to come by. The Bhagavad Gita says that pleasures born of the touch of the senses are wombs of sorrow, with a beginning and an end, and that the wise do not delight in them (5.22). To spend the time we have only on what passes in a moment and leaves sorrow behind is not wise. The book asks that it be spent well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two paths, and what they reach<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The way of knowledge, the way of selfless action, and two kinds of attainment<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two paths<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

To reach him, the Lord sets out two main paths in the Bhagavad Gita. He says so himself in the third chapter: long ago he spoke of a twofold steadfastness, the yoga of knowledge for the Sankhyas and the yoga of action for the yogis (3.3). The first is sankhya yoga, the way of knowledge. The second is karma yoga, the way of action done without desire for its fruit. This is a second way of dividing the teaching, beside the three groups of six chapters: those show where the weight of each chapter falls, these are the two disciplines a seeker can follow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The way of knowledge<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Sankhya yoga begins with seeing the world as it is. All things are like a mirage, or the scenes of a dream: seeming real while they last, but made of maya. It is the qualities of nature, the gunas, moving among the gunas (3.28). So in whatever is done through the mind, the senses and the body, the seeker keeps no sense of \u2018I am the doer\u2019. Seeing, hearing, eating, walking, sleeping, breathing, he holds in mind, \u2018I do nothing at all\u2019 (5.8, 5.9).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And with that he stays at one with the Paramatman, the highest self, who is everywhere, and who is being, consciousness and bliss. For him nothing exists apart from Vasudeva. \u2018Vasudeva is all\u2019, the seventh chapter says of such a one, and adds that he is very rare (7.19). This is the practice of sankhya yoga.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The way of selfless action<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Karma yoga begins from another place: everything is the Lord\u2019s. The seeker does his work as the Lord asks and for the Lord, gives up attachment and the wish for its fruit, and stays the same in success and in failure (2.48). Like a lotus leaf that water does not wet, he acts and is not stained (5.10).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With it goes devotion. With faith and love, in body, speech and mind, he takes refuge in the Lord and keeps him in mind always: his name, his qualities, his glory and his form. The Lord calls such a one the most steadfast of all yogis (6.47). This is nishkama karma yoga, action free of desire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One goal, two roads<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Both lead to the same end. So the Lord says it is the childish, not the wise, who call them different, and that one who truly follows either gains the fruit of both (5.4, 5.5). Yet while they are being walked they are different, and so he describes them apart (3.3).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One person cannot walk both at the same moment. There may be two ways across the Ganga, but whoever crosses goes by one of them at a time. A sannyasi, who has laid action down, has no room for the way of action. The way of knowledge is different: in the reading given here, it is open at every stage of life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Knowledge for the householder too<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Because the Lord also calls sankhya renunciation, sannyasa, some say only a sannyasi may follow it, and never a householder. The second chapter says otherwise. From its eleventh verse to its thirtieth the Lord teaches the way of knowledge, the self that is not born and does not die, and in the middle of it he tells Arjuna, a householder, to fight (2.18). Then he says that what he has given so far is the understanding of sankhya (2.39). If a householder had no place on that path, the Lord would not have taught it to him that way. Not every teacher agrees. Sri Shankara, whose commentary the Reflections on these pages draw on, holds that the steadfastness in knowledge of 3.3 belongs to those who have renounced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What the path asks is only that the seeker not take himself to be the body. One who still feels \u2018I am this body\u2019 cannot follow it rightly, and so the Lord says renunciation is hard to reach without the yoga of action (5.6), and that the unmanifest is reached with difficulty by those who have a body (12.5). Selfless action is the easier way. That is why he tells Arjuna again and again to keep him in mind and act: \u2018remember me at all times, and fight\u2019 (8.7).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two kinds of attainment<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Both paths speak of siddhi, \u2018attainment\u2019, and the Bhagavad Gita uses the word in two senses. In 2.48 siddhi is success, set beside its opposite, failure: in its plainest sense, the attainments of the world (Sri Shankara reads it there as the gaining of knowledge). In 14.1 the Lord speaks of para siddhi, the supreme attainment the sages reached through knowledge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The lower attainments, apara siddhi, are the familiar ones: money, fame, power, authority. Each comes with a shadow. What has come can go, and so the one who has it lives in fear of losing it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The higher attainment is the knowledge that sets free, moksha jnana, and with it comes vairagya, freedom from craving. One who has it has nothing left to lose, and so nothing to fear. The Bhagavad Gita puts fear beside attachment and anger, and says the sage of steady mind is free of all three (2.56).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And this knowledge has to be kept. At the end Arjuna does not say he has learned something new. He says his delusion is gone and his memory, smriti, has come back (18.73). The knowledge that frees is spoken of as something remembered. Once found, it is not to be forgotten. That is why the book is read again and again, and why the first of the dhyana verses says, \u2018On you I meditate, again and again\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About these pages<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Each chapter has its own index page, available in three scripts: Kannada, Sanskrit (Devanagari) and English IAST. Every verse has a page of its own with the verse in all three scripts, a word-by-word meaning, and full meanings in Kannada and English. Two collapsible boxes follow, in Kannada with English: context and commentary drawn from several traditional commentaries, and what the verse says to life today. Where commentators read a verse differently, both readings are given. All seven hundred verses now have such pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the first six chapters each verse page also has a Reflection under its meaning: the central point of Sri Shankara Bhagavatpada\u2019s commentary, and of Anandagiri and Madhusudana Saraswati where he has none, in Kannada and English. It is being added to the other chapters in turn. The ten verses said before the reading have a page of their own, with meaning and explanation: Gita Dhyana<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sources:<\/strong> several.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The eighteen chapters of the Bhagavad Gita in English IAST transliteration, with verse-by-verse pages carrying word meanings and Kannada and English explanations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4058,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":14,"_manohara_link_phrases":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[156],"tags":[187,188],"class_list":["post-1669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bhagavad-gita","tag-krishna","tag-shlokada-artha"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dixith.com\/jeevana-sutra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dixith.com\/jeevana-sutra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dixith.com\/jeevana-sutra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dixith.com\/jeevana-sutra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dixith.com\/jeevana-sutra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1669"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/dixith.com\/jeevana-sutra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1669\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9089,"href":"https:\/\/dixith.com\/jeevana-sutra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1669\/revisions\/9089"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dixith.com\/jeevana-sutra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dixith.com\/jeevana-sutra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dixith.com\/jeevana-sutra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dixith.com\/jeevana-sutra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}