The Bhagavad Gita was composed by the sage Ved Vyasa as part of the Mahabharata, the epic he is credited with authoring. Its words are the teaching of Lord Krishna to the warrior Arjuna on the battlefield of Kurukshetra. According to tradition, Lord Ganesha wrote the Mahabharata down as Vyasa dictated it.
So the Gita has three “authors”, each in a different sense: Krishna, who spoke it; Vyasa, who composed the epic that holds it; and Ganesha, who, in the famous story, wrote it down. Here is how the three fit together, and what scholars say about when the text took shape.
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Krishna spoke it, Arjuna heard it
The Bhagavad Gita, “the Song of the Lord”, is a conversation. On the morning of the great war, Arjuna sees his teachers, cousins and elders lined up against him and lays down his bow, unable to fight. Krishna, serving as his charioteer, answers his despair. Over 18 chapters he speaks of duty (dharma), action without attachment to its fruits (karma yoga), knowledge (jnana) and devotion (bhakti). He ends by revealing his universal form.
In this sense the teaching is Krishna’s. Devotees regard the Gita as the direct word of God, which is why it is often called the essence of the Vedas.
Vyasa composed the Mahabharata that holds the Gita
The Gita is not a separate book in its origin. It forms chapters 23 to 40 of the Bhishma Parva, the sixth of the Mahabharata’s eighteen books (in the Critical Edition). Tradition names the sage Krishna Dvaipayana Vyasa as the composer of the whole epic, and so of the Gita within it.
Vyasa is also a character in his own story: the grandfather of both the Pandavas and the Kauravas, and the sage credited with arranging the Vedas. In the epic, Vyasa gives the charioteer Sanjaya divine sight so that he can see the distant battlefield and narrate the war, and the Gita, to the blind king Dhritarashtra. That is why the Gita opens with Dhritarashtra asking Sanjaya, “What did my sons and the sons of Pandu do, gathered at Kurukshetra?”
Ganesha wrote it down
The most loved part of the story comes from a passage in the Mahabharata’s first book, the Adi Parva, found in many versions of the epic. Vyasa needed a scribe who could keep pace with his composition, and he asked Ganesha. Ganesha agreed on one condition: Vyasa must dictate without ever pausing. Vyasa agreed with a condition of his own: Ganesha must understand every verse before writing it.
Whenever Vyasa needed time to compose, he spoke a verse so complex that Ganesha had to stop and think. In some tellings, when his pen broke, Ganesha snapped off one of his own tusks and kept writing. That is why he is often shown with a broken tusk.
How many verses and chapters are in the Bhagavad Gita?
The Gita has 18 chapters and 700 verses (shlokas) in its standard form. Most verses are in the anushtubh metre, the same metre as most of the Mahabharata.
When was the Bhagavad Gita written?
There are two answers, and both are worth knowing.
- Tradition places the Kurukshetra war at the end of the Dvapara Yuga. The beginning of the Kali Yuga is traditionally reckoned at 3102 BCE.
- Scholars date the composition of the Gita as we have it to roughly the 2nd century BCE to the 2nd century CE, as part of the long growth of the Mahabharata, which drew on much older oral tradition.
The Gita’s influence needs no date: it has been commented on by Adi Shankaracharya, Ramanujacharya and Madhvacharya, translated into English by Charles Wilkins in 1785, and read by thinkers from Mahatma Gandhi to Henry David Thoreau.
Watch Krishna’s story
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Frequently asked questions
Who is the author of the Bhagavad Gita?
The sage Ved Vyasa is credited with composing it as part of the Mahabharata. The teaching itself is spoken by Lord Krishna to Arjuna, and tradition says Lord Ganesha wrote the epic down as Vyasa dictated.
Did Krishna write the Bhagavad Gita?
Krishna spoke the teaching; he did not write it down. It was composed in verse by Vyasa within the Mahabharata and narrated in the epic by Sanjaya.
Which part of the Mahabharata is the Bhagavad Gita?
It is in the Bhishma Parva, the sixth book of the Mahabharata: chapters 23 to 40 in the Critical Edition.
How many shlokas are in the Bhagavad Gita?
Seven hundred, across 18 chapters.
Sources: the Mahabharata, Bhishma Parva and Adi Parva (Critical Edition, Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute); Bhagavad Gita on Wikipedia; Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Bhagavadgita”.