JAST ©2016 M.U.C.

Women’s College, Burdwan ISSN 2395-4353

-a peer reviewed multidisciplinary research journal Vol.-02, Issue- 01

Emerson’s “Brahma” and the Bhagavad-Gitā: A

Revaluation
Pradipta Sengupta
M.U.C.Women’s College, Burdwan
Burdwan; West Bengal; India-713104
pradiptasg.eng/[email protected]

Abstract:
Given Emerson’s filiations with Indian scriptures and religions, and his being influenced by the charm of the eternal
message of the Bhagavad-Gitā, the parallels between the Emerson’s “Brahma” and the Hindu scripture become an
interesting area for exploration. Both “Brahma” and the Bhagavad-Gitā dwell on the idea of evenness, oneness and
sameness; both celebrate the supremacy of “Brahma” over other things, other gods and religions; both privilege the
role of the subjective self over the remaining world; and both enjoin an absolute surrender to the supreme pure
consciousness embodied in Brahma. This paper tries to find out the exact parallels between the two texts hitherto
unexplored by any critic.

Keywords: Emerson, Indian, scriptures, Bhagavad-Gitā, Brahma, Krishna, sameness, oneness,

evenness, gods, religions, surrender, consciousness, supreme, absolute

To tread a trodden path in research is a difficult job, and when one thinks of such an
eminent figure as Emerson, it appears all the more difficult, for critics have almost exhausted
their critical research on him from every critical angle. Given Emerson’s filiations with Indian
and Oriental thoughts, a revaluation of his poem “Brahma” seems both daring and worth-
considering: daring because it is an oft-discussed poem where there is hardly any scope for
further research, and worth-considering because of the gnomic and esoteric nature of the
poem which elicits and invites further clarification. Yet my humble submission in this article
is to show some revealing resemblances between the poem and the famous Hindu scripture,
the Bhagavad-Gitā.
Emerson’s preoccupation with Indian and Oriental philosophy did not elude the
critical ken. Swami Paramananda in his Emerson and Vedanta(1919) explores the impact of the
Upanishads on Emerson. Emerson’s affiliation with the Oriental and the Asian is explored by
Frederic Ives Carpenter in Emerson and Asia(1930), while Arthur Christy analyses the impact
of oriental philosophy in American Transcendentalism in The Orient in American
Transcendentalism(1932). Following in the toes of Christy, Leyla Goren examines the traces of
Brahmanistic philosophy in Emerson in Elements of Brahmanism in the Transcendentalism of
Emerson (1959). Dale Riepe’s research, The Philosophy of India and Its Impact on American
Thought (1970), illustrates the role of Indian thought in shaping American philosophical
thoughts. Most of these researches veer around generalisations, and lack any sharp focus.
Critics have poured in their critical focus on this particular poem. In her wonderful
research, The Influence of Indian Thought on Ralph Waldo Emerson, Shanta Acharya devotes a
separate chapteri to this poem. Acharya casts her net wide and tries to analyse the poem with
the Indian concept of the Brahma in general, and the Upanishads and The Vishnu Purana in
particular. But strangely enough, there is hardly any reference to Bhagavad-Gitā to which its
resemblances are conspicuous, and yet unexplored. Other researches on this poem ii, too, miss
[Article History: Received on 24.03.2016, Accepted on 27.05.2016, Published on 28th June, 2016]
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its precise affinities with the Bhagavad-Gitā. Given Emerson’s filiations with the Oriental
philosophy and considering this research gap, I offer to illustrate the amazing parallels
between this poem and the Bhagavad-Gitā.
II
Emerson’s initiation to Indian thoughts is a well-known fact. For him the Hindu scriptures
are “learning’s El Dorado”iii. Emerson’s interest in Indian philosophy and Indian religions
was shaped by many factors and influences. One of the earlier influences to chisel it was
Robert Southey’s The Curse of Kehama. Besides, his family was well equipped with a good
collection of books on oriental literature and philosophy. His father Rev.William Emerson’s
library comprised books like Elizabeth Hamilton’s Translations of the Letters of a Hindoo Rajah:
Written Previous to, and during the period of his residence in England, J.Priestly’s A Comparison of
the Institutions of Moses with Those of the Hindoos and Other Ancient Nations, Lord Teignmouth’s
Life of Sir William Jones, among other worksiv. Apart from his essays on “Veda”, “Menu” and
“Berkeley and Viasav” which appeared in 1836, it is worth-considering what he said in his
“Divinity School Address”:
This thought dwelled deepest in the minds of men in the
devout and contemplative East; not alone in Palestine, where
it reached its pure expression, but in Egypt, in Persia, in India,
in China. Europe has always owed to oriental genius, its divine
impulses.vi
Shanta Acharya notes how “[b]etween July 23 and September 22, 1840, Emerson borrowed
from the Boston Athenaeum the third volume of Sir William Jones’ Works, which includes the
Institutes of Hindu Law: or The Ordinances of Menu, the 1799 edition”(89). These sporadic
evidences amply attest to Emerson’s filiations with Indian philosophy, and religious
thoughts.
The moment the first English translation of the Bhagavad-Gitā by Charles Wilkins
came out in 1785, it made great ripples on the intellectual world in either sides of the
Atlantic, i.e., in Europe and in the U.S.A.: Blake and Carlyle in England, and Whitman,
Thoreau, and Emerson in the U.S.A., among others, were charmed by its message. Southey’s
“Notes” to The Curse of Kehama which Emerson was thoroughly conversant with, contained a
passage on the disposition of the soul taken from the Bhagavad-Gitā:
The Soul is not a thing of which a man may say, it hath been,
it is about to be, or is to be hereafter, for it is a thing without
birth; it is ancient, constant, and eternal, and is not to be destroyed
in this its mortal frame(280).
Emerson’s reading of Victor Cousin’s Introduction to the History of Philosophy (1832) which
contained an illustration of the Bhagavad-Gitā shows his early initiation to this Hindu
scripture. In September 1845 Emerson acquired a copy of Wilkins’s The Bhagavat Geeta: or
Dialogues of Kreeshna and Arjoon(1785)vii. Emerson’s indebtedness to Wilkins’s translation is
further attested by what he wrote to Max Muller in a letter in 1873:
All my interest in the Aryan is old reading of Marsh’s
Menu, then Wilkins’ Bhagavat Geeta; Burnouf’s Bhagavat
Purana, and Wilson’s Vishnu Purana,— yes & a few other
translations. I remember I owed my first taste for this fruit
to Cousin’s sketch, in his first Lectures, of the Dialogue
between Krishna & Arjun, & I still prize the first chapters

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of that Bhagvat as wonderful, & would gladly learn any
accurate date of their age.viii
Thoreau, Emerson’s fellow-transcendentalist, was equally influenced by the compelling
verses of the Bhagavad-Gitā. In his famous Walden, Thoreau admits his indebtedness to this
Hindu scripture in effusive terms:
In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous
and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagavad-Gitā, since
whose composition years of the gods have elapsed, and
in comparison with which our modern world and its
literature seem puny and trivial(266).
This observation of Thoreau seems to find a correspondence in Emerson who was equally
charmed by the message of this holy book. Emerson’s opinion of the book is equally
encomiastic:
It was the first of the books, it was as if an empire spake to
us, nothing small of unworthy but large, serene, consistent,
the voice of an old intelligence which in another age & climate
had pondered & thus disposed of the same questions which
exercise us.ix
Little wonder then, the influence of the Bhagavad-Gitā on Emerson was conspicuous, a fact
which justifies the rationale behind my paper which attempts to explore the parallels
between his poem “Brahma” and the Hindu scripture.
III
The poem “Brahma” made its appearance in late 1845 in Emerson’s Journals. In stark contrast
to his previous poem “Indian Superstition” where Indian culture has been decimated and
where Brahma is presented a weak and ineffectual god, “Brahma” celebrates the supremacy
of the god Brahma who is too vast and too variegated to be described in precise terms. He is
so infinite a being as not to be put into the straitjacket of a definite formula or any precise
description. Thus He is, paradoxically, neither the “slayer” nor the “slain”:
If the red slayer thinks he slays,
Or if the slain think he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
I keep, and pass, turn againx.
Now let us compare these lines with what Krishna says to Arjuna in the second chapter:
Ya enam vetti hantāram yaścainam manyate hatam;
Ubhau tau na vijanito nāyam hanta na hanyate. ( 2.19)
(Who considers the Atman as the slayer and who considers
this Atman as the slain, both of them do not know that It does
not kill nor is It killed”.)xi
What Krishna means to suggest, and what has been almost exactly replicated by Emerson in
“Brahma” is that the Atman or the soul is immune from demolition. The nature of Brahma, in
the Indian scriptural parlance, has multiple interpretations. It is sometimes identified with
the Atman or the soul; sometimes it is identified with the non-dual pure consciousness, and
sometimes with the essence of this egg-like universe or Brahmanda. In this connection the
interpretation of Swami Ranganathananda Maharajji xii is illuminating:
In the Taittiriya Upanisad, ‘enquiry into the nature of Brahman’
begins with the statement: Annam brahmeti vyājanāt.’(The disciple)
understood annam, i.e., food as Brahman’. When you put food into
the stomach, out of the food comes energy for you....Then the
Upanisad continues to say that prāna, manas, vijnana, etc., were taken
to be Brahman. Ultimately, the true Brahman, of the nature of

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infinite, non-dual, pure Consciousness, was realized as the true

Brahman.
These others are all the same Brahman at various levels of
experience (Universal Message, I, 460).

Emerson proceeds to illuminate the otherwise inexplicable nature of the Brahma in

whom we find an inextricable inseparability between the incongruous and the opposite:
Far or forgot to me is near;
Shadow and sunlight are the same;
The vanished gods to me appear;
And one to me are shame and fame.
The otherwise dichotomous and the incompatible seem to be dissolved in the unique
identity of the Brahma in whom all the opposites are harmoniously fused together into
oneness and one identity, such that no distinction is possible. Interestingly, it is this spirit of
oneness that strikes the chord of harmony in Indian religious and philosophical thought. This
paradoxical nature of the Brahma in whom the binaries like ‘far’ and ‘forgot’, ‘sunlight’ and
‘shadow’, appearance and disappearance, ‘shame’ and ‘fame’, and so forth, get inextricably
enmeshed and fused into the spirit of oneness, can also be compared with some similar
verses from the Bhagavad-Gitā. Let us consider the following verse from the second chapter:
Sukhaduhkhe same kritvā lābhālābhau jayājayau;
Tato yuddhāya yujyasva naivam pāpamavāpsyasi( 2.38).
(“Having made pain and pleasure, gain and loss, conquest
and defeat, the same, engage yourself then in battle. So shall
you incur no sin”.) (Universal Message, I, 158).
The real yogi, explains Krishna to Arjuna, is immune from the distinction between the
opposites, and strikes a spirit of sameness and oneness. In fact, in the forty eighth verse of the
second chapter Krishna defines “yoga” as the ability to achieve this sameness of mind:
“samobhutvā samatvam yoga ucyate”(2.48) (Universal Message, I, 186).In the fifty sixth verse of
the second chapter Krishna virtually reiterates this message of sameness as being the
characteristic of the sage of wisdom:
Duhkhesvanudvignamanāh sukhesu vigatasprihah;
Vitaragābhayakrodhah sthitadhirmunirucyate(2.56)
(“One whose mind is not shaken by adversity, one who does
not hanker after happiness, who has become free from blind
attachment, fear, and anger, is indeed the muni or sage of steady
wisdom”) (Universal Message, I, 221).
The same spirit of equality and sameness characterizes a person possessed with self-
knowledge, comments Krishna in the fifth chapter:
Vidyā vinaya sampanne brāhmane gavi hastini;
Śuni caiva śvapāke ca panditah samadarśinah(5.18)
[“The panditas or knowers of the Self look with an equal
eye on a brāhmana endowed with learning and humility, a
cow, an elephant, a dog, and an eater of dogs(low-caste person)”]
(Universal Message, II, 67).
Emerson’s inseparability between “shame and fame” may remind any perceptive reader of
what Krishna says to Arjuna in the seventh, eighth, and ninth verses from the sixth chapter of
the Bhagavad-Gitā. For example in the seventh verse Krishna says:
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Jitātmanah praśantasya paramātmā samāhitah;
Śitosna sukhadukhesu tathā mānāpamānayoh(6.7)
(“To the self-controlled and serene person, the Supreme
Self is the object of constant realization, in cold and heat,
pleasure and pain, as well as in honour and dishonour”)
(Universal Message, II, 123).
Similarly in the next verse Krishna reiterates, “Whose heart is filled with satisfaction through
knowledge and wisdom, and is steady, whose senses are conquered, and to whom a lump of
earth, stone, and gold are the same, that yogi is called steadfast” (Universal Message, II, 125)xiii.
Such a yogi is well akin to the spirit of the Brahma for whom there is no room for dichotomy
and difference, and who treats the entire world with a sense of evenness and equality.
Krishna’s advice to Arjuna in the next verse(6.9), therefore, is to achieve this sense of equality
of judgement: “One who looks with equal regard upon well-wishers, friends, enemy,
neutrals, arbiters, the hateful, the relatives, and upon the righteous and the unrighteous alike,
attains excellence” (Universal Message, II, 128).
The equal judgement towards “shame” and “fame” finds its correspondence in
Krishna’s comment, “I am the same in all beings; to Me there is none hateful or dear”(9.29) xiv.
But this objectivity leading to this spirit of equality is possibly rendered in a more
conspicuous way in the eighteenth and nineteenth verses from chapter twelve of the
Bhagavad-Gitā. That devotee is dear to Him, says Krishna, whom he describes as follows in
these verses:
Samah śatrau ca mitre ca tathā mānāpamānayoh;
Śitosna sukhadukhhesu samah sangavivarjitah.(12.18).
(One who is same to friend and foe, and also honour and
dishonour, who is the same in heat and cold, and in pleasure
pain, who is free from attachment,”)
Tulyanindā stutirmauni santusto yena kenacit;
Aniketah sthiramatih bhaktimān me priyo narah(12.19)
(“To whom censure and praise are equal, who is silent,
content with anything, homeless, steady-minded, full of
devotion, such a person is dear to Me”.) (Universal Message, III, 26,
27).
Any perceptive reader cannot but compare these verses with that of the seventh verse in
chapter six, explicated earlier. Little wonder then, both the Bhagavad-Gitā and Emerson’s
“Brahma” are dominated by the spirit of sameness, evenness, and oneness.
While the predominance of the self or “I” characterizes a large section of the
Bhagavad-Gitā, we find such a privileging of the self over others in Emerson’s “Brahma”
where the speaker is the subjective self who almost egotistically relates his whereabouts:
They reckon ill who leave me leave me out;
When me they fly, I am the wings;
I am the doubter and the doubt,
And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.
The role of the other becomes subservient to the predominance of the self expressed in the
reiterative use of “I”. And one may well compare it with a similar privileging of the self over
the other in the Bhagavad-Gitā:
Aham kratuh aham yajnah svadhāham aham ausadham;
Mantro’ham ahamevājyam ahamagniraham hutam(9.16)
(“I am the kratuxv,I am the yajna, I am the svadhā, I the
ausadha, I am the mantra, I am the ājya, I the fire, and I
the oblation”) (Universal Message, III, 367)xvi.

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Interestingly, in Emerson’s “Brahma” the singer and the song (“hymn”) are the same. This
inextricability between the actor and the act, or what W.B.Yeats puts it in an altogether
different context in his famous query in the last line xvii of his poem “Among School
Children”, strikes resemblance to the inalienability among the mantra, the ghee, the fire, and
the act of oblation mentioned in the Bhagavad-Gitā.
It was not possible for Emerson to go through Shankara’s hymn “Nirvanashatkam”,
translated by Swami Vivekananda, when he wrote “Brahma”. Whether he read it later is a
matter of research, but nowhere is the predominance of the self better expressed than in this
poem of Shankara. To do justice to this claim one may just have a cursory glance at the
concluding part of this translated version:
I am untouched by the senses; I am neither mukti nor knowable;
I am without form, without limit, beyond space, beyond time;
I am in everything; I am the basis of the universe; everywhere am I.
I am Existence Absolute, Knowledge Absolute, Bliss Absolute—
I am He, I am He(Shivoham, Shivoham). xviii
In fact Brahma combines the tripartite qualities of existence(sat), knowledge(chit) and
bliss(ānanda), and is thus embodied in what is known as Satchidānanda.
The final stanza of the poem is a privileging of Brahma over other gods, and a plea to
others to surrender themselves completely to Him. Emerson came to know about the gods
like Varuna(wind), Vritra(cloud), Aswins(water), Indra(firmament), and Agni(fire)—or
whom he refers to as the “strong gods” in “Brahma”— from Horace H. Wilson’s translation
of the Rig Veda Sanhita. The final message of the poem is to find refuge in Brahma through an
absolute surrender to Him and a renunciation of the world:
Find me, and turn thy back on heaven.
And let us compare it with what Krishna says to Arjuna:
Manmanā bhava madbhakto madyāji mām namaskuru;
Mām eva esayasi yuktvaivam ātmānam matparāyanah(9.34)
(“Fill thy mind with Me, be My devotee, sacrifice unto Me,
bow down to Me; thus having made your heart steadfast in
Me, taking Me as the supreme Goal, you shall come to Me”)
(Universal Message, II, 395).
The idea of turning one’s “back on heaven” is an attempt to renounce the external world, and
attests to preferring Brahma to the remaining gods and religions in the world. And when we
look at the Bhagavad-Gitā, we find how in the final sections, Krishna in a similar way, exhorts
and counsels Arjuna to renounce other religions and establish his steadfast, and unwavering
faith in Him through an absolute surrender. In the eighteenth and final chapter of the
Bhagavad-Gitā Krishna demands such an absolute surrender through the abandonment of
other religions:
Sarvadharmān parityajya māmekam śaranam vraja;
Aham tvā sarvapāpebhyo moksayisyāmi mā śucah(18.66)
(“Relinquishing all dharmas take refuge in me alone; I will
liberate you from all sins; grieve not”) (Universal Message, III, 395).
Conclusion:
Given Emerson’s filiations with Indian scriptures and religions, and his being influenced by
the charm of the eternal message of the Bhagavad-Gitā, the parallels between the two texts are
amply-justified. Both “Brahma” and the Bhagavad-Gitā dwell on the idea of evenness, oneness
and sameness; both celebrate the supremacy of “Brahma” over other things and other gods
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and religions; both privilege the role of the subjective self over the remaining world; and
both enjoin an absolute surrender to the supreme pure consciousness embodied in Brahma.

Works Cited
Acharya, Shanta. The Influence of Indian Thought on Ralph Waldo Emerson .Lewiston: The
Edwin Mellen Press, 2001.
Cameron, Kenneth Walter Emerson, the Essayist: An Outline of His Philosophical
Development through 1836 with Special Emphasis on the Sources and Interpretation
of “Nature”, 2 vols. Raleigh, North Carolina: The Thistle Press, 1945.
Carpenter, Frederick Ives Emerson and Asia. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1930.
Christy, Arthur E. The Orient in American Transcendentalism. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1932.
Cousin, Victor. Introduction to the history of Philosophy. Trans. Henning Gotfried Linberg.
Boston: Hilliard, Gray, Little, and Wilkins, 1832.
Gilman, William H., et al. The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo
Emerson, eds. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1960-82.
Goren, Leyla. Elements of Brahmanism in the Transcendentalism of Emerson. New York:
Columbia University Press, 1959.
Paramananda, Swami. Emerson and Vedanta. Boston: Vedanta Center, 1918.
Parini, Jay. ed. The Columbia Anthology of American Poetry. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1995.
Ranganathananda, Swami. Universal Message of the Bhagavad-Gitā: An Exposition in the
Light of Modern Thought and Modern Needs, 3 vols. Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama,
2000.
Riepe, Dale. The Philosophy of India and Its Impact on American Thought. Springfield,
Illinois: Charles C. Thomas, 1970.
Sanborn, F.B. ed., The Genius and Character of Emerson. Boston: J.R.Osgood & Co., 1885.
Spiller, Robert E., and Alfred R. Ferguson, eds. The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo
Emerson .Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1971.
Southey, Robert. The Curse of Kehama. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme &Brown,
1810.
Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. New Delhi: S.Chand & Co.,1962.
Vivekananda, Swami. Vedanta: Voice of Freedom, ed. Swami Chetanananda. Calcutta:
Advaita Ashrama, 1987.
Wilkins, Charles. trans. The Bhagvat-Geeta, or Dialogues of Kreeshna and Arjoon; in
Eighteen Lectures; With Notes. London: British East India Company, 1785.
Wilson, Horace Hayman. trans. Rig-Veda-Samhita: A Collection of Ancient Hindu Hymns.
London: W.H.Allen & Co. , 1850-1866.

i See ‘”Brahma”: The Essential Man’ in Shanta Acharya, The Influence of Indian Thought on Ralph Waldo Emerson (Lewiston:
The Edwin Mellen Press, 2001), 173-190. Further references to this book have been cited as Acharya.
ii See William T. Harris, “Emerson’s Orientalism”, F.B.Sanborn, ed., The Genius and Character of Emerson(Boston: J.R.Osgood &

Co.,1885),372-385; Frederick Ives Carpenter, Emerson and Asia(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1930),110-122.
iii
Quoted in Acharya, 48.
iv
Kenneth Walter Cameron, Emerson, the Essayist: An Outline of His Philosophical Development through 1836 with Special
Emphasis on the Sources and Interpretation of “Nature”, 2 vols.(Raleigh, North Carolina: The Thistle Press, 1945), II,136.
v Emerson meant Vyāsa, the poet of The Mahābhārata.
vi Robert E. Spiller and Alfred R. Ferguson, eds. The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson.(Cambridge: Harvard University

Press, 1971) I,80.

vii
Quoted in Acharya, 60.
viii Quoted in Acharya, 79.
ix The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, eds. William H. Gilman, et al (Cambridge: Harvard

University Press, 1960-82),X, 360. All further references to this book have been cited as JMN.

x In this article I have used the text of Emerson’s “Brahma” from Jay Parini, ed. The Columbia Anthology of American
Poetry(New York: Columbia University Press, 1995),103.
xi Swami Ranganathananda, Universal Message of the Bhagavad-Gitā: An Exposition in the Light of Modern Thought and

Modern Needs, 3 vols.(Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 2000), I,127. All my quotations from and translations of the Bhagavad-Gitā
are from this book, further referred to as Universal Message.
xii Swami Ranganathananda was the 13 th President of the Ramakrishna Math and Mission, and one of the greatest exponents of

Vedantic philosophy.

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xiii One may compare this with verse 24 from Chapter 14: “Samaduhkhasukhah svasthah
samalostāśmakāncanah;/Tulyapriyāpriyo dhirah tulyanindātmasamstutih”(14.24)(“He or she who is alike in pleasure or pain,
Self-abiding, who regards a clod of earth, a stone, and gold alike; who is same to agreeable and disagreeable events, who is
wise and same in censure and praise”), Universal Message, III,126.

xiv Universal Message, II,388.

xv
While kratuh and yajnah are forms of Vedic sacrifice, ājya is the ghee that is poured into the scared fire. Svadhā is the holy
mantra or hymn, and ausadha in Sanskrit means medicine.
xvi One may compare this predominance of the self with the next three verses(9. 17-19) of the Bhagavad-Gitā.

xvii “How can we know the dancer from the dance?” But one should note that Yeats’s context was totally different from that of
Emerson.
xviii
Swami Vivekananda, Vadanta: Voice of Freedom, ed. Swami Chetanananda(Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1987),270.

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