When God did a Creative Remix!!

We live in the age and time of remakes and remixes of movies, and music. Hollywood has always been good at it. Particularly Disney has made remakes of its popular stories like The Parent Trap (1961 and 1998) and Lion King (1994 and then 2019). Bollywood has legalised shameless plagiarism as creative inspiration, with many of its popular movies and songs being uncredited scene by scene remakes of movies.

Theatrical Release Poster for Disney’s The Lion King (2019)

What was an unexpected surprise that the God’s themselves sometime engage in creative remix. Bhagwad Gita is a discourse given by Lord Sri Krishna in a battlefield to Pandava Prince Arjuna. Lord Shri Krishna is an Avatar of Hindu God Shri Vishnu. It is well accepted that Gita is a summary of the ideas from Upanishads.

Lord Shri Krishna an Avatar of Hindu God Shri Vishnu acted as charioteer to Arjuna in the battle of Mahabharata. Shri Krishna gave a discourse to Arjuna to fight the battle against his friends and relatives to restore Dharma (or righteousness)

Upanishads are a part of Vedic literature in Sanskrit which explore the deeper questions of meaning of life, purpose of existence and nature of God, much much before it was solved in “The Hitchhikers Guide to Galaxy”. Adi Guru Shankaracharya a revered Hindu ascetics from the God’s own land Kerala is credited with selecting the ten principal Upanishads.

In Katha Upanishad the hero Nachiketa reaches the abode of Yamraj the God of death.

Katha Upanishad is one of the ten principal Upanishads. It tells the story of a defiant, brave, young boy Nachiketa. Nachiketa pulls an impossible feat to reach the doorsteps of the God of death (Yamraj) in his mortal body. Impressed by Nachiketa the God of death decides to reveal to him the nature of human body and death.

Let’s cut the chase and come to the exact verses in Bhagwad Gita which are a creative remix of the verses in Katha Upanishad. So drumrolls, and here come the verses

Let us look at Katha Upanishad verse 1.2.18, and Bhagwad Gita verse 2.20 on the nature of the soul:

na jāyate mriyate vā vipaścinnāyaṃ kutaścinna babhūva kaścit
ajo nityaḥ śāśvato’yaṃ purāṇo na hanyate hanyamāne śarīre

— Katha Upanishad 1.2.18

na jāyate mriyate vā kadāchin
nāyaṁ bhūtvā bhavitā vā na bhūyaḥ
ajo nityaḥ śhāśhvato ’yaṁ purāṇo
na hanyate hanyamāne śharīre

— Bhagwad Gita 2.20

So surprising is the similarity. Let us look at another pair of verses from Katha Upanishad (verse 1.2.19) and Bhagwad Gita (verse 2.19) on the nature of death:

hantā cenmanyate hantum̐ hataścenmanyate hataṃ
ubhau tau na vijānīto nāyam̐ hanti na hanyate

— Katha Upanishad 1.2.19

ya enaṁ vetti hantāraṁ yaśh chainaṁ manyate hatam
ubhau tau na vijānīto nāyaṁ hanti na hanyate

— Bhagwad Gita 2.19

I will refrain from giving the context and meaning of the verses. You can go to the links above to better understand these verses. I hope you enjoyed these two examples when God did a creative remix. Do share if you know of any more such instances.