The publication history of the Bhagavad Gita in Europe follows a now-familiar sequence that undercuts the illusion of linear textual transmission.

Instead of the Sanskrit original giving rise to faithful translations, we find that the first printed version was the 1785 English edition by Charles Wilkins, framed as a translation from a Sanskrit manuscript but with no printed Sanskrit counterpart.

This English "translation" then inspired early French and German versions based solely on it, indicating a chain of re-translation rather than direct transmission.

The Sanskrit text itself was not printed until 1808, suggesting that the English edition functioned as a kind of prototype: the "first draft" or beta version.

Only later, with Schlegel's 1823 Latin-Sanskrit edition, does the “original” Sanskrit achieve canonical authority, allowing later scholars to retroactively assert philological legitimacy.

This sequence: translation first, then the “original,” then critical editions, is precisely the pattern found in the rollout of other foundational texts like the Iliad, the Bible, and Plato. It is always the "translation-first" method.

The implication is clear: sacred and classical texts in the modern imagination often emerge not from ancient oral traditions but from a reverse-engineered process of literary construction, tailored for European scholarly consumption, where authority is slowly built through layers of translation, retranslation, and retroactive philology.