What is Yajña in the Bhagavad Gita?
Yajña was the fire sacrifice at the centre of Vedic religion: a formal rite, with materials, a priest and precise procedure. The Gita takes the word and does something quietly drastic with it.
Chapter 4 lists a series of things that count as yajña, and most of them involve no fire at all. Offering the senses, offering the breath, offering what you own, offering self-restraint, offering study. 4.33 then ranks the offering made of knowledge above the offering made of material, which inverts the older order of prestige.
By chapter 18 the widening is complete. 18.46 says a person reaches fulfilment by honouring, through his own work, the one everything came from. The work itself becomes the offering. Nothing has to be added to the day and no special place is required, which is the same move the book makes with every other practice: take the thing that was reserved for a ritual setting and show that the ordinary version was always available.
The verses 19
3.9
Work binds a person, except when it is done as an offering.
3.10
At the beginning, the Maker brought people and offering into being together, and said: through this, flourish.
3.11
Sustain the powers above with this, and let them sustain you.
3.12
Sustained by your offering, those powers will give you what you need.
3.13
Good people eat what is left after the offering, and they are freed of all that clings to them.
3.14
Living things come from food.
3.15
Know that action comes from what was spoken, and what was spoken comes from what does not perish.
4.23
For someone unattached and free, his mind settled in knowing, acting as an offering - everything he does dissolves completely.
4.24
The offering is the infinite.
4.25
Some who practise make their offering to the powers above.
4.28
Some offer what they own.
4.31
Those who eat what is left after the offering go to what lasts.
4.32
Many kinds of offering are spread out before what is highest.
9.16
I am the rite and I am the sacrifice.
17.11
An offering made the way it should be made, by people wanting nothing back, with the mind settled on this simply being what is done - that one is clear.
17.12
But an offering made with one eye on what it will bring, or made so as to be seen - know that one as driven, Arjuna.
17.13
An offering made with no rule followed, no food shared out, nothing said over it and nothing given to anyone, and no faith behind it - that one is called dark.
18.3
Some thinkers say action should be given up as a flaw in itself.
18.5
Offering, giving and discipline must not be given up.