The prestigious Columbia University Press has recently released a ground-breaking volume, the first-ever comprehensive concordance of the Bhagavad Gita, authored by Dr. Graham M. Schweig (Garuda Das), PhD.

Entitled “Bhagavad Gita Concordance: A Comprehensive Word Reference with English and Sankrit Indexes,” the new work has been hailed by scholars and students alike as a monumental achievement. It “fills a major lacuna in scholarship and will become a standard reference book and resource for millions of scholars and practitioners,” said Dr. Gopal Gupta of Aurora University in Illinois. 

What is a concordance?

A standard concordance provides an alphabetical list of words or terms found in a particular text, accompanied by their respective locations or occurrences within that text. It serves as a helpful tool for researchers, students, or readers to quickly locate specific words or phrases and explore their usage within the given context. It’s most often used to facilitate in-depth study, analysis, or cross-referencing of a particular text. 

Given that there are well over a dozen concordances just for the Bible (not to mention many other ancient and modern writings), it is a significant milestone that this kind of resource is finally available for one of the greatest literary and spiritual treasures of the world, the Bhagavad Gita. The Preface notes that while there were some earlier offerings by scholars, “this book is the first truly comprehensive concordance reference work for the Bhagavad Gita that lists every word of the original along with related words as well as Sanskrit and English word indexes.”

A Decades-Long Labor of Love

The reference resource by Dr. Schweig was decades in the making, a labor of love that began on 3×5 cards when he was a graduate student at Harvard University. As technology advanced, his work was transferred to punch cards inserted into massive processors in the 1970s. Later, with the advent of the desktop computer, the project could be expanded and accessed much more quickly. The author and his students used early forms of the concordance over the last few decades, while this final version “evolved and expanded into a much more elaborate and nuanced work,” said Schweig. He expressed his particular thanks to his graduate students, generous donors, and an institution as prestigious as Columbia University for its willingness to publish this beautiful 464-page hardback volume. 

An Overview of the Features

The book’s unique features go well beyond what you would find in a typical concordance. Following the Preface, a Brief Overview surveys the various working parts of the reference and offers a Quick Guide, several scenarios for how readers can utili