Kathmandu :

Anugita constitutes Shree Krishna’s final exhortation to Arjuna in the Mahabharata before they part company with each other for ever. Following their victory at Kurukshetra, ashwamedhyagna is propitiated with great fanfare by the Pandavas. After the ashwamedhayagna, Shree Krishna is all set to return home to Dwarika. At this point, Arjuna expresses his desire to listen to Shreemadbhagavad Gita once again and asks Shree Krishna for a repeat recital of the same. Shree Krishna, who is amused at the request, cannot do so as he was altogether in a different yogic state when he had recited it in the battleground. Arjuna is nevertheless obliged with another version, which is known as Anugita, the follow-up.

Shree Krishna invariably depicts himself as the one and only pure sacchidanandghana paramatma, and everything else is nothing but a manifestation of that very elusive pervasiveness. One who knows him as purushottam is considered a know-all. Such a person

is invariably merged in Shree Krishna irrespective of the worldly activities he may be engaged with at any given moment.

Shree Krishna’s teaching is: “There never was a time when ‘I’ was not, there is never a moment where ‘I’ am not, and there will never be a time when ‘I’ shall not be.”

This is in fact the underlying experience with which one operates all the time even though only a few have actually been able to realise this absolute truth and live accordingly. Shree Krishna’s identification with this all encompassing capital ‘I’ has been unequivocal from the moment of his mundane incarnation to his apparent passing away from this material world. This very capital ‘I’ is known as atman that constitutes reality as absolute existence-consciousness-bliss.

Unlike Shreemadbhagavad Gita, which deals equally with various aspects of karma, bhakti, and gnana, emphasis is laid in Anugita on the need for achievement of liberation from worldly bondage. The overriding requirement of self-realisation and its importance is the one and only concern of Anugita.

The literal meaning of anu, a prefix in Sanskrit, is after/following. Anugita has, therefore, been translated as The Follow-up Gita.

The central theme of Anugita is the same as that of Shreemadbhagavad Gita: The basic need for self realisation that can alone lead to liberation from the worldly bondage of life and death, karmabandhan, and ways and means to achieve the same. The words that have been disseminated also originate from the very mouth of Shree Krishna. Only the circumstances as to their actual delivery are different.  Shreemadbhagavad Gita happened to originate in the battlefield just before the onset of a great war while Anugita was recited at a more leisurely pace and more comfortable surroundings of Maya Danava designed Sabhabhavan at Indraprastha, prior to Shree Krishna’s final departure from this physical world known as sansara, the real Mahabharata.