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 wish, mere abstinence from the act constitutes no merit.

147.  The particle ‘he’ in the second line is explained by both Sankara and Anandagiri as equivalent to Yasmat.  The meaning becomes certainly clearer by taking the word in this sense.  The ‘he’, however, may also be taken as implying the sense of “indeed.”

148.  Buddhi in the first line is explained by Sreedhara as Aintavishayak buddhi.  Bhavanta Sreedhara explains, is Dhyanam; and Sankara as Atmajnanabhinivesas.  K. T. Telang renders Bhavana as perseverance.  I do not think this is correct.