On the Episode of the Mahabharata Known by the Name Bhagvad-Gita by Wilheim von Humboldt

This volume presents G.W.F. Hegel’s review of Wilhelm von Humboldt’s lectures on the Bhagavad-Gita, delivered on 30 June 1825 and 15 June 1826, at the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences, Berlin, and published in 1827 in the Proceedings of the Academy. Hegel’s review of these lectures, in which Humboldt had praised the Gita as the greatest, most beautiful, and presumably, the only real philosophical poem of all known literatures, appeared in the January and October 1827 issues of his Jahrbucher fur wissenschaftliche Kritik, and were meant as a critical assessment of the Hindu world-view in toto in a comparison with European Weltanschauung. Hegel’s review, an extremely important document dealing with India, has so far not been translated into English. Dr. Herbert Herring took up the task of preparing an English translation, which is presented here along with the German text. This bi-lingual edition is meant predominantly for the benefit of Indian scholars and students of Comparative Philosophy. In his Introduction, Dr. Herring highlights Humboldt’s and Hegel’s entirely different, even antagonistic, approaches to Indian thought.