At the start of the Kurukshetra War between the Pandavas and the Kauravas, Arjuna despairs thinking about the violence and death the war will cause in the battle against his kin and becomes emotionally preoccupied with a dilemma. The Bhagavad Gita is set in a narrative framework of dialogue between the Pandava prince Arjuna and his charioteer guide Krishna, an avatar of lord Vishnu. The work is dated to the second half of the first millennium BCE. It forms the chapters 23–40 of book 6 of the Mahabharata called the Bhishma Parva. The Bhagavad Gita ( / ˌ b ʌ ɡ ə v ə d ˈ ɡ iː t ɑː/ Sanskrit: भगवद्गीता, romanized: bhagavad-gītā, lit.'The Song by God' ), often referred to as the Gita ( IAST: gītā), is a 700-verse Hindu scripture, which is part of the epic Mahabharata.
