Difference between Bhagavad Gita & Bhagavatam - Why is the gita revered?

Is there a difference between the Bhagavad Gita and the Bhagavatam? Hello everyone, I'm Pulkit Mathur and the answer is yes the two are entirely different texts. Many times people get confused between the Srimad Bhagavad Gita and the Srimad Bhagavatam so in this video let us understand the difference between the two. We start by understanding the meaning of the word Srimad that is usually attached before the names of the Bhagavad Gita and the Bhagavatam. This word Srimad means splendour or beauty in Sanskrit. So when the adjective Srimad is added before the names of both the texts, it is simply a way of offering honour and respect for the knowledge contained in these texts. Now the Bhagavad Gita as many of us already know is the Updesha or the teaching that Lord Krishna gave to Arjuna on the battlefield of Kurukshetra. Arjuna was standing in the middle of the battlefield with his Pandava army arrayed on one side and the Kaurava army on the other. Seeing that he had to fight and kill his own cousin brothers the Kauravas, seeing that he had to fight against his own guru Dronacharya who had taught him archery, seeing that he had to kill his own grandfather Bhishma who had brought him up with such love and care, as well as to kill his other friends and relatives, who had aligned themselves with the Kauravas, Arjuna naturally lost all courage and became extremely nervous and tense. Arjuna's situation was truly a horrible one to be in. Imagine if we were in the police service and one of our dear family members, our father or our brother had committed a crime, and now we had to go arrest him and collect evidence against him so that he could be prosecuted and put in prison. What would be the emotions running through our mind then? Far worse than this was the dilemma faced by Arjuna, for although the Kauravas had committed many atrocities, they and the people aligned with them were nonetheless Arjuna's dear relatives, teachers and friends, with whom he had grown up and with whom he shared numerous emotional bonds. Seeing Arjuna's shattered mental state, Lord Krishna gave him the profound Updesha of the Gita, so that Arjuna's mind could be infused with the correct knowledge, so that Arjuna could analyse the situation with the right perspective, so that he could muster the courage to choose the right course of action, so that he could develop the boldness to take the right decision - even though this action would result in him incurring an immense personal loss. It is precisely for detailing such profound moral teachings that the Gita is so revered a text. Because if we think about it, how many of us have the courage to stand up for the right thing - to do the right action in the face of family or social opposition, in the face of trolling, slander and hate comments which are so common today? How many of us can speak the truth before powerful corporate and political forces, how many of us can stand up and fight for a cause, when we know that our own life, or that of our family's will be put in danger? We have all seen what happens to those journalists, environmental or right to information activists who expose the corruption of those occupying the seats of power. Overcome by fears of a similar outcome, the typical mentality of most of us is therefore: Why I should bother? If a big politician is corrupt, why should I expose him in my journalism? Why invite unnecessary trouble? If I see a person lying hurt on the road, why should I stop and help? The police will only harass me later. My friend routinely ill-treats his wife, but that is his personal matter, why should I spoil my relationship with him? This is how most of us tend to tend to think. Arjuna too thought in a similar way but Sri Krishna corrected his thinking. And we too like Arjuna, must correct our thinking and operate in a brave and courageous manner. Only then will we be following the teachings of the Gita. Merely worshipping Sri Krishna in temples, or celebrating Janmashtami the birth of Sri Krishna will not do. His teachings have to be reflected in our day to day actions. Now luckily for the world, there are indeed many such people, who like Arjuna, are able to muster up the courage to do the right thing, to stand up for truth and righteousness, whether it is in their personal life or in their public life, and it is these people who are the true heroes of society, whom society must really look up to and honour. Normally we tend to slavishly idolize film stars and other celebrities for their looks and their wealth, but we must instead focus our attention on those social and intellectual warriors who stand up for the truth and for the right thing to do under extremely difficult circumstances. This type of righteous strength to do our dharma, our duty even at a great personal cost is the teaching of the Gita. And this is why it is one of the most revered texts of Vedantic spirituality. So to come back to our question of the difference between the Bhagavad Gita and the Bhagavatam, the Bhagavad Gita thus is a part of the Mahabharata. As a matter of fact it belongs to the 6th Book of the Mahabharata which is called the Bhishma Parva. Parva means book or section. The Bhagavatam on the other hand is a Purana. It is a text which was written nearly 2500 years after the Gita and the Mahabharata. Now the reason the Bhagavatam, which is also known as the Bhagavata Purana is so popular is because it contains a description of the lilas or the stories of Sri Krishna, especially when he was a little child. The Mahabharata itself does not say much about the childhood of Sri Krishna, so these stories such as Krishna lifting the Govardhan Mountain on his little finger, or the stories of Krishna and Sudama or Krishna and Balrama, or the tales of Sri Krishna dancing on the head of the serpent Kaliya, all these belong to the Bhagavatam. Now the reason the Rishis of the middle ages felt the need to write the Puranas such as the Bhagavatam, was so that the high philosophy and the difficult truths that had been outlined in the Vedas, the Upanishads and the Gita, could be brought to the understanding of the common people through the use of enigmatic stories. As Swami Vivekananda has explained: The Puranas were written to popularise the religion of the Vedas. The language in which the Vedas are written is very ancient, infact it is an ancient form of Sanskrit, and even among scholars very few can trace the date of these books. The Puranas were written in the language of the people of that time, what we call as modern Sanskrit. They were then meant not for scholars, but for the ordinary people; and ordinary people cannot understand philosophy. The philosophy, meaning the concepts of Vedanta were therefore given to them in concrete form, by the means of the lives of saints, of great men and historical events that happened to the race etc. The sages made use of these things to illustrate the eternal principles of religion. So through the telling of enigmatic stories about Gods, sages and historical events, the Pauranic Rishis tried to explain the difficult Vedantic truths to the general public of their ancient time. Through the telling of these stories they aimed to evoke bhakti or devotion for God in the hearts of the common person, so that the person could then be inspired to walk on the righteous and moral path towards God-realization. Now so charming are these ancient Pauranic tales composed by the Rishis, that even today more than a thousand years after they were written, they continue to have a hold on people's imagination. The captivating imagery and easy to grasp nature of these tales, instantly engages the mind of the listener and hence they remain immensely popular. In fact while most people in India would fail to recite a single shloka from the Gita, or the Upanishads, even a totally illiterate villager would nonetheless know the story of Krishna lifting the mountain of Govardhan by heart. Such is the powerful hold of Puranas such as the Srimad Bhagavatam. Now one exceedingly important fact, a fact that few people today seem to realize, is that the stories found in the Puranas, cannot always be taken to be literally true. In fact if we were to always take them at face value, if we were to always accept them as literally true, we would actually end up doing a huge disservice to these books. Because, we would then miss out on the deep Vedantic knowledge that has been symbolically represented through these stories. Now we shall discuss the symbolism embedded within many Pauranic tales, such as the story of Lord Vishnu resting on the coils of the Snake Ananta in the next video. But for now let us summarize this video, by noting that the Srimad Bhagavad Gita is part of the Mahabharata and it contains within it a synopsis of the Vedantic principles outlined in all the 108 Upanishads. The Srimad Bhagavatam on the other hand is a Purana which explains the complex Vedantic truths outlined in the Upanishads and the Gita, to the ordinary people, through the use of captivating stories and legends, such as those concerning the childhood of Sri Krishna. So having understood this important difference between the two books let us end this video. As always we shall meet again in the next video. Until then goodbye.