sophisticated level of revivalism than its contemporaneous Islamic revivalism and African Christian revivalism through independent churches. It is perhaps the best example of'elective affinity' — better than any cited by Max Weber and his disciples. 1. This is literally true for obvious reasons .The Vedas and Upanishads are far less accessible to the ordinary Hindu though they refer to it with reverence. Thus the Bhagavadgita as the word of God, gained the central place because of its availability in English and Indian languages. 2. Professor P.Nagaraja Rao notes in his Introduction to Vedanta^ .V.Bhavan, Bombay ,almostin passing, without any comment or explanation, that it is interesting to note than the great acharyas differed in interpreting the Gita in regard to its emphasis ongnana or bhakti, but the modem authors are all agreed that Karmayoga is its essence. This paper sets out to explain why. 3. Many great Indians explicitly acknowledged the Gita as their life guide: Vivekananda in his three pamphlets on Gnana, Bhakti and Karma Yogas,Ti\ak in his monumental Bhagavad Gita Rahasya ,Mahatma Gandhi in his collected essays called A nasakti Yoga and Rajaji in hisKan-nan Kaattiya Vazhi. My own attitude study of administrators in Chapter 7 of my Social Background ofIndia's Administrators, Publications Division, New Delhi, 1971, revealed how much importance they attached to the Gita. The National Academy of Administration, which trains India's higher civil servants, also arranges regular lectures on the Gita every year. Again, the majority of 'dicourses' advertised in various Indian cities today are on the Gita. In all these expositions, the activist ethic is stressed specially, as for example, in Swami Chinmayananda's and Swami Ranganathanandas lectures — particularly to urban middle class audiences. 4. The speculation on the date and authorship of the Gita is referred to in Vivekananda's Karmayoga and discussed in KM. Panikkars Survey of Indian History, National Information Publication, Bombay, pp. 122-23. Internal evidence clearly suggests that it is post-Upanishadic and perhaps post-Buddhist. 5. Of the eighteen chapters only Chapters II, III, IV and V are directly devoted to Karmayoga with an overspill into the sixth. 6. In reply to Arjuna's straight question as to whether sanyasa or karma is superior, at the beginning of Chapter V.Krishna clearly states that Karmayoga is superior. But this observation is not referred to again in later chapters. 7. Swami Atmananda, Sankara 's Teachings in His Own Words. Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Bombay, Chapter II. 8. I agree with this Marxist rationalist view of ritual as sympathetic magic. See Bhattacharyas Hindu Philosophy, People's Publishing House, Bombay. 9. I have explained this a little further in my article 'Emergence and Eclipse of Tamil Brahmins', Economic and Political Weekly, Special Issue, July 1969. We may also note that the western work ethic owes a lot to the transplantation of monastic ritualism and Benedictine time consciousness to the layman's life. 10. Chapter III, Verse 5. 11. It was this aspect more than the internal content that Tilak stressed when he summed up the essence of the Gita as Think of me and Fight'. 12. Bhagavadgita with Sankara 's Commentary (in Sanskrit), Chowkamba Vidya Bhavan, Varanasi. Sankara takes off right from the part where Krishna chides Arjuna, then puts down briefly the contemporary Mimamsaka case for Karmayoga and starts demolishing it straightaway. 13. On this Sankara says casually, 'Now he praises Karmayoga'. Journal of Arts & Ideas 141