This part describes the original reader on incarnateword.in; the controls it mentions (steppers, panels, chips, pop-ups) are found there. Open it on incarnateword.in
What This Is
An interactive word-by-word, morpheme-by-morpheme study of all 700 Sanskrit verses of the Bhagavad Gita, synced with Sri Aurobindo’s English rendering. Around the text sit three companions: the Presentation System (the left panel) for structured reading, the Deep Dives library of continuous-read essays, and an Appearance panel for shaping how it all looks.
Reading a Verse — The Five Stages
Each verse unfolds through five stages using the stepper above the verse (or the ← → arrow keys):
- Original — the Devanagari (or IAST) verse with the full English translation.
- Sandhi-Viccheda — compounds broken into their atomic components by the rules of sound-liaison. Turn Animate on to watch them crack apart.
- Anvaya — words reordered from verse-metre into natural prose order.
- Morphology — every word colour-coded into prefix, stem / root and suffix. Click a word for its full declension/conjugation table, derivation chain and Nairukta etymology.
- English — English equivalents with Sanskrit ghost-traces beneath.
The Left Panel — Presentation System
The left panel is the structured way to read the Gita as a single winding argument rather than scattered statements. It is ordered deliberately:
- Teaching Progression — the main spine. 25 pedagogical stages tracing Krishna’s strategy from the Provisional Rebuke through the Cosmic Vision to the Final Synthesis. Click a stage to read only its verses, in order. Begin here when you want the whole movement.
- Reading Arcs (Dimensional Lenses). 90 key verses tagged across four partial views — Arjuna’s Psychological Arc, the Threefold Yoga, Philosophical Development, and Narrative Function. Lenses on the spine, not separate interpretations.
- Topics. 37 thematic tags across 6 categories applied to all 700 verses — a way to gather the evidence on a theme.
- Search. Find verses by a word in the translation or transliteration.
- Open Arjuna’s Crisis dossier. The diagnostic prologue that names the condition the whole teaching answers — it opens as a full reading page.
Choosing any lens, topic or search scopes the verses to that thread and shows a short context note above the verse. The Browse button returns you to free chapter-and-verse navigation.
Deep Dives — The Essays
The ✦ Deep Dives button opens a library of continuous-read essays after Sri Aurobindo’s reading: the flagship Arjuna’s Crisis dossier and fifteen deep presentations — Krishna’s pedagogy, the threefold yoga as a braid, the guna machine, the world-form and the terrible divine, and more. They open inside this browser as a reading layer — no new tabs — and any verse reference inside an essay (such as 2.47) jumps straight to that verse. Use the ‹ Back to the verses bar to return.
Interactive Touches
- Hover a word at any stage for a quick tooltip of grammar, meaning and root.
- Click a word at the Morphology stage for its full table, derivation chain and etymology.
- IAST toggles Devanagari ↔ Roman transliteration; Animate turns on the stage transitions; All Verses stacks the whole chapter (or the current lens) on one page.
- Sound Philosophy opens Sri Aurobindo’s seed-sound chart; Walkthrough gives a guided tour.
- Arrow keys — ← → move through the five stages; ↑ ↓ move between verses.
Appearance & Options — the ⚙ gear
- Reading Theme — Dawn (default), Palm Leaf, Twilight, or Night.
- Header Image — set how present Śrī Krishna’s gaze is in the banner; slide it down to nothing for a plain header.
- Keep banner fixed on top — pin the banner while you scroll, or let it scroll away.
- Reading Width — Cozy, Default or Wide.
- Gentle motion and Ambient glow — soft fades and a faint golden aura, on or off.
Every preference is remembered between visits.
Sanskrit at Its Deepest Level
The aim is to learn Sanskrit not only as vocabulary and grammar but as a living vibrational system where each sound carries meaning — as the Rishis understood it and as Sri Aurobindo articulated it in his seed-sound theory: every phoneme a seed of action, every word a crystallisation of that primordial movement.
