Since a Christian can't accept a Gita offered, apparently Charles Wilkins, and the ruthless Warren Hastings under whose pressure& patronage Wilkins first translated into Emglish and published the Gita in 1785 for wider dissemination among the British - were not Christians.
https://twitter.com/tribalations/status/1341243269209059330
Hastings saw Gita “of a sublimity of conception, reasoning& diction almost unequaled, &single exception among all the known religions of mankind of a theology accurately corresponding with that of the Christian dispensation& most powerfully illustrating its fundamental doctrines”
This bad not-a-Christian Hastings also thought Gita "will survive when the British domination in India shall have long ceased to exist". There wr other bad European not-Christians fascinated (in the positive sense) with the Gita enough to translate it directly from Sanskrit.
the not-Christian Johann Gottfried Herder partly translated Gita into German in 1792, followed by his not-Christian student Friedrich Maher's complete (from Wilkins English) translation in 1802 - who saw anticipation of Plato and Spinoza in the Gita.
the not-Christian Karl Wilhelm Friedrich (Schlegel) translated parts of Gita directly in 1808, and his not-Christian brother August (Prof of Sanskrit& Indology at Uni of Bonn) translated it entirely into Latin directly frm Sanskrit and published including the original text.
the not-Christian August thought "If the study of Sanskrit had brought nothing more than the satisfaction of being able to read this superb poem in the original, I would have been amply compensated for all my labors. It is a sublime reunion of poetic and philosophical genius"
the not-Christian Jean-Denis Lanjuinais directly translated Gita into French from Sanskrit in 1832 and thought "it was a great surprise to find among these fragments of an extremely ancient epic poem from India . . a completely spiritual pantheism . . .the vision of all-in-God".
not-Christian John Davies, Member of the Royal Asiatic society, of the Cambridge philological Society, translated the Gita in 1882, and the not-Christian Charles Johnston, in 1908 translated Gita as "Bhagavad Gita: 'The Songs of the Master'".
the not-Christian Johnston thought "The Bhagavad Gita is one of the noblest scriptures of India, one of the deepest scriptures of the world. . .a symbolic scripture, with many meanings, containing many truths. . . .forms the living heart of the Eastern wisdom’"
to wind up, many not-Christian "Christians" appreciated the Gita profoundly& keeping in mind the well-deserved criticism that many of them appreciated while consciously or subconsciously looking at it as something to be engaged with to preserve imperialist/church superiority
lets end with the not-Christian Henry David Thoreau, prolific at Walden Pond felt in 1846 to pen that he was "bathing" his "intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagvat-Geeta"
for the tweeple writing frm India indicating as a Christian she cdnt be offered the Gita, we must appreciate the profound advance she has made in knowledge over all those not-Christians frm Wilkins to Thoreau who even with their imperialist superiority cdnt resist Gita's depth.
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