will spread farther than in Hindu English. - Swami Vivekananda Swami Prabhavananda, a monk of the Ramakrishna Order and founder and head of the Vedanta Society of Southern California, first came to the US in 1923, assigned to the Vedanta Society of San Francisco. In 1930, he founded the Vedanta Society of Southern California, and within the decade he had attracted many notable literary disciples, including English authors, Gerald Heard, Aldous Huxley, and Christopher Isherwood. While the Swami was on vacation in Palm Springs, he was reading an English translation of the Gita and felt the meaning was lost. After consulting with his literary disciples, he decided to take on the effort to produce a new translation. Preface to [the 2023] Edition In the preface to the new edition, a more detailed description of the origin of the Translation is given. It also explains why this translation does not have the traditional commentary, that is usually given after each verse. Two foundational Swamis of the Ramakrishna Order had this advice: Swami Brahmananda, Prabhavananda's guru, said, “Let your first reading of the Gita be without commentary.” And Swami Saradananda says in his book The Essence of the Gita, “It is not necessary for you to study all those commentaries… It is enough to understandthe meaning as it reveals itself to you spontaneously.” Prabhavananda and Isherwood felt it was more important to incorporate the commentaries into the text itself, rather than have the story of the Gita interrupped by explanation. They also decided not to include the verse numbers. The point is made that the "...sole purpose of this edition is to include those standardized chapter and verse markings to facilitate comparisons to other translations. Otherwise, this edition is faithful to the Prabhavananda-Isherwood Gita." Translators’ Preface Prabhavananda and Isherwood explain how the Gita is actually just a small part of the epic poem, the Mahabharata (chapters 23–40 of book 6). It's also explained why the original is in all verse, but they decided to be more flexible with the writing, "...we have translated the Gita in a variety of styles, partly prose, partly verse. There is, of course, no justification for this experiment in the text itself. The transitions from one style to another are quite arbitrary. They can be judged from one standpoint only: have we made the book more readable?" The translators also explain why they were more free with