Abstract

The present essay intends to delineate the sense of bhakti in the Bhagavadgītā. There are two notions of bhakti: one having its roots in the Ṛgveda and the other originating with the Bhāgavata Purāṇa. The Vedic notion of bhakti was more or less forgotten by the time of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa. Most of modern commentators, when they trace the lineage of bhakti to the Vedas, try to understand and interpret it in light of the later notion of bhakti. The earlier sense of bhakti is “sharing, participation, partaking, belonging to", while the later sense of the term is “attachment, devotion, service, love". It is argued in the essay that bhakti only in the Vedic sense is presented in the Bhagavadgītā.