A concordance to Bhagavadgita

This book is a useful concordance to Bhagavadgita, but falls short of meeting all the requirements of a good reference book. First of all, the hymns are numbered serially from 1-700. Therefore the reader has to figure out the chapter and the hymn. For example, the word Vedanta-krt (565) refers to verse 565, which is chapter 15, verse 15. The second problem is that references are provided only to the first hymn; if a word is found in more than one verse in the Gita. An ellipsis following a word indicates that a given word is in more than one hymn, but this is an incomplete reference; a full concordance is necessary. The reader has to know all the hymns that contain a particular word. Finally the words listed in the book dos not follow English alphabetical order, but appears to follow Sanskrit alphabetic order. For example, the word sadhibhuta (310) (a, bar; the second letter "a" has bar over it) is found after the word savyasacin (447), but the reader would have liked to see this word after sadbhave (620), which is separated by 10 pages. It is interesting to note that key words like; Sankhyam (209), Sankhyayogau (208), Sankhyanam (122), Sankhye (86), Sankhye krtante (635), and Sankhyena yogena (513), all referring to Sankhya philosophy appear only once in the Gita.

The author has put everything together in his book with a good intention of helping everyone to be familiar with Gita but his efforts could have been a little more sincere.

Reference: Dictionary of Bhagavad Gita by Swami Sri Atmananda