In the Uttara-khand (later section) of the Padma Purana, Shiva tells Parvati that Vishnu told Lakshmi that the first five chapters of the Gita are his five heads, the next 10 chapters are his 10 arms, the 16th chapter is his trunk and the last two chapters are his feet. Then for each of the 18 chapters of the Gita, a story is told, 18 stories in all. We are informed that by listening to the stories, we worship Vishnu and get the benefits of the Bhagavad Gita. We do not have actually read the Bhagavad Gita. Thus, Gita, the text, becomes a deity embodied in a set of stories.

The deification of Gita is further indicated by the composition of two songs: Gita Dhyana and the Gita Mahatmya, chanted before and after a Gita discourse. Gita Dhyanam, now a part of Vaishanva Tantrasara, was probably written in the 16th century by the logician Madhusudana Saraswati, who was strongly influenced by Chaitanya Mahaprabhu of Bengal.