After the great fratricidal war of the Mahābhārata was over, and the Pandavas had become sole and complete masters of their ancestral kingdom, Krishna and Arjuna--the two interlocutors in the Bhagavad-Gita--happened to take a stroll together in the great magical palace built for the Pāṇḍavas by the demon Maya. In the course of the conversation which they held on the occasion, Kṛṣṇa communicated to Arjuna his wish to return to his own people at dvaraka, now that the business which had called him away from them was happily terminated. Arjuna, of course, was unable to resist the execution of this wish; but he requested Krishna, before leaving for Dvārakā, to repeat the instruction which had been already conveyed to him on 'the holy field of Kurukshetra.,' but which had gone out of his 'degenerate mind.' Kṛṣṇa thereupon protests that he is not equal to a verbatim recapitulation of the Bhagavad-Gita, but agrees, in lieu of that, to impart to Arjuna the same instruction in other words, through the medium of a certain 'ancient story'--or purātana ithihasa. And the instruction thus conveyed constitutes what is called the Anugītā, a name which is in itself an embodiment of this anecdote.
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