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This article discusses the political and theological ends to which the thesis of different "recensions" of the Bhagavadgītā were put in light of recent work on the search for an "original" Gītā (Adluri, Vishwa and Joydeep Bagchee, 2014, The Nay Science: A History of German Indology; Adluri, Vishwa and Joydeep Bagchee, 2016a, Paradigm Lost: The Application of the Historical-Critical Method to the Bhagavad Gītā). F. Otto Schrader in 1930 argued that the "Kashmir recension" of the Bhagavadgītā represented an older and more authentic tradition of the Gītā than the vulgate text (1930, 8, 10). In reviews of Schrader's work, Franklin Edgerton (Journal of the American Oriental Society 52: 68-75, 1932) and S. K. Belvalkar (New Indian Antiquary 2: 211-51, 1939a) both thought that the balance of probabilities was rather on the side of the vulgate. In a trenchant critique, Edgerton took up Schrader's main arguments for the originality of the variant readings or extra verses of the Kashmir version (2.5, 11; 6.7; 1.7; 3.2; 5.21; 18.8; 6.16; 7.18; 11.40, 44; 13.4; 17.23; 18.50, 78) and dismissed them out of hand (1932, 75). Edgerton's assessment was reinforced by Belvalkar, who included a survey of various other "versions" of the Gītā in existence, either by hearsay or imitation. Belvalkar was especially hostile to the possibility of a Kashmir recension, because, as he noted, "once Schrader's thesis is accepted as proved, it raises the possibility of other recensions of the Poem being current at different times in different parts of India" (1939a, 212). Belvalkar was consequent in following this assessment in the Critical Edition of the Bhagavadgītā, and the text reprinted there is essentially that of Sa?kara's eighth-century commentary. Yet, the publication of the Critical Edition has not sufficed to end the controversy, as witnessed by the latest spate of works (Vedavyas, E, 1990, Ancient Bhagavad Gita: Original Text of 745 verses, with Critical Introduction) (Bhattacharjya, Sunil Kumar, 2013, The Original Bhagavadgītā. Complete with 745 Verses) that claim to have discovered the "original" Gītā. In light of these attempts, we raise the question: why is there such interest in identifying versions of the text at variance from the normative one? And why do Indologists, in the name of "critical" scholarship, continue to welcome the creation of apocryphal versions of Indian texts? We suggest that there is a historical link between German Indology's emphasis on creating new texts and German Protestantism.
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