Sanskrit
इति गुह्यतमं शास्त्रमिदमुक्तं मयाऽनघ । एतद्बुध्वा बुद्धिमान् स्यात्कृतकृत्यश्च भारत ॥
iti guhyatamaṃ śāstram idam uktaṃ mayā 'nagha etad budhvā buddhimān syāt kṛtakṛtyaś ca bhārata
Translation
Thus by Me this most secret teaching hath been told O sinless one. This known, he hath become illuminated and hath finished his work, O Bhârata.
Annie Besant · The Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Annie Besant (4th ed., 1922) — Wikisource · Public Domain
Explanation
The chapter closes the way several Gita chapters do, with Krishna stepping back to characterize the teaching just given — calling it the “most secret” teaching (guhyatamam) and promising that whoever grasps it becomes illuminated and “has finished his work” (kṛta-kṛtyaḥ), a phrase for having discharged one’s essential task in life. The claim to secrecy escalates chapter over chapter in the Gita (compare 9.1’s “most secret knowledge”), which is worth naming as a rhetorical pattern rather than a literal ranking — each major teaching gets framed as the deepest one so far, right up to the poem’s actual conclusion in chapter 18.