The Anugita

1882 | 64,929 words

Volume 8, The Sacred Books of the East. This part Contains the english translation of the Anugita (a portion of the Ashvamedhika Parva from the Mahabharata)....

Introduction

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LIKE the Bhagavadgītā and the Sanatsujātīya, the Anugītā, is one of the numerous episodes of the Mahābhārata. And like the Sanatsujātīya, it appears here for the first time in an English, or, indeed, it is believed, in any European garb. It forms part of the Aśvamedha Parvan of the Mahābhārata, and is contained in thirty-six chapters of that Parvan. These chapters--being chapters XVI to LI--together with all the subsequent chapters of the Aśvamedha Parvan, form by themselves what in some of our copies is called the Anugītā Parvan-a title which affords a parallel to the title Bhagavadgītā Parvan, which we have already referred to. The Anugītā is not now a work of any very great or extensive reputation. But we do find some few quotations from it in the Bhāṣyas of Saṅkarācārya, and one or two in the Saṅkhya-sāra of Vijñāna Bhikṣu, to which reference will be made hereafter. And it is included in the present volume, partly because it affords an interesting, glimpse of sundry old passages of the Upaniṣad literature in a somewhat modified, and presumably later, form; and partly, perhaps I may say more especially, because it professes to be a sort of continuation, or rather recapitulation, of the Bhagavadgītā. At the very outset of the work, we read, that, after the great fratricidal war of the Mahābhārata was over, and the Pāṇḍavas had become sole and complete masters of their ancestral kingdom, Kṛṣṇa and Arjuna--the two interlocutors in the Bhagavadgītā--happened to take a stroll together in the great magical palace built for the Pāṇḍavas by the demon Maya. In the course of the conversation which they held on the occasion, Kṛṣṇa communicated to Arjuna his wish to return to his own people at Dvārakā, now that the business which had called him away from them was happily terminated. Arjuna, of course, was unable to resist the execution of this wish; but he requested Krishna, before leaving for Dvārakā, to repeat the instruction which had been already conveyed to him on 'the holy field of Kurukṣetra,' but which had gone out of his 'degenerate mind.' Kṛṣṇa thereupon protests that he is not equal to a verbatim recapitulation of the Bhagavadgītā, but agrees, in lieu of that, to impart to Arjuna the same instruction in other words, through the medium of a certain 'ancient story'--or purātana itihāsa. And the instruction thus conveyed constitutes what is called the Anugītā, a name which is in itself an embodiment of this anecdote.

Now the first question which challenges investigation with reference to this work is, if we may so call it, the fundamental one-how much is properly included under the name? The question is not one quite easy of settlement, as our authorities upon it are not all reconcilable with one another. In the general list of contents of the Aśvamedha Parvan, which is given at the end of that Parvan in the edition printed at Bombay, we read that the first section is the Vyāsa Vākya, the second the Samvartamaruttīya. With neither of these have we aught to do here. The list then goes on thus: 'Anugītā, Vāsudevāgamana, Brāhmaṇa Gītā, Guruśiṣyasamvāda, Uttankopākhyāna,' and so forth. With the later sections, again, we arc not here concerned. Now let us compare this list with the list which may be obtained from the titles of the chapters in the body of the work itself. With the sixteenth chapter, then, of the Aśvamedha Parvan, begins what is here called the Anugītā Parvan; and that chapter and the three following chapters are described as the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth chapters respectively of the Anugītā Parvan, which forms part of the Aśvamedha Parvan. The title of the twentieth chapter contains a small, but important, addition. It runs thus, 'Such is the twentieth chapter of the Anugītā Parvan, forming part of the Aśvamedha Parvan--being the Brahma Gītā' This form is continued down to the thirty-fourth chapter, only Brāhmaṇa Gītā being substituted for Brahma Gītā. At the close of the thirty-fifth chapter, there is another alteration caused by the substitution of Guruśiṣyasamvāda for Brāhmaṇa Gītā; and this continues down to the fifty-first chapter, where the thread of the narrative is again taken up--the philosophical parenthesis, if I may so say, having come to an end. With the fifty-first chapter our present translation also ends. Now it appears from the above comparison., that the list of contents set out above is accurate, save in so far as it mentions Vāsudevāgamana as a distinct section of the Aśvamedha Parvan. No such section seems to be in existence. And there appears to be nothing in the Aśvamedha Parvan to which that title could be appropriately allotted. The edition printed at Madras agrees in all essential particulars with the Bombay edition; with this difference, that even at the close of the twentieth chapter, the name is Brāhmaṇa Gītā, and not Brahma Gītā as it is in the Bombay edition. The Calcutta edition also agrees in these readings. Turning now to a MS. procured for me by my excellent friend Professor Ābājī Viṣṇu Kāthavaṭe at Ahmedabad, and bearing date the 15th of Phālguna Vadya 1823, Sunday, we find there at the end of the Aśvamedha Parvan a list of contents like that which we have seen in the printed edition. The relevant portion of that list is as follows: 'Samvartamaruttīya, Anugītā, Guruśiṣyasaṃvāda, and Uttankopākhyāna.' Here we find neither the erroneous entry of Vāsudevāgamana, nor the correct entry of Brahma Gītā, which are both contained in the other list. In another MS. which I have now before me, and which has been lent me by Professor Bhāṇḍārkar, who purchased it in Puna for the Government of Bombay--in this MS., which contains the commentary of Arjuna Miśra, the earlier chapters are described not as chapters of the Anugītā Parvan, but of the Anugītā contained in the Aśvamedha Parvan, and they are numbered there as they are numbered in our translation, not continuously with the numbering of the previous chapters of the Aśvamedha Parvan. At the close of chapter IV, we have an explicit statement that the Anugītā ends there. Then the Brahma Gītā begins. And the first chapter is described as a chapter of the Brahma Gītā in the Aśvamedha Parvan. The numbering of each of these chapters of the Brahma Gītā is not given in. the copy before us--the titles and descriptions of the various chapters being throughout incomplete. Some of the later chapters are described as chapters of the Brāhma Gītā, and some as chapters of the Brāhmaṇa Gītā; but this discrepancy is probably to be put to the account of the particular copyist who wrote out the copy used by us. With what is chapter XX in our numbering the Guruśiṣyasaṃvāda begins. This MS. omits all reference to any Anugītā Parvan, and fails to number the various chapters. Its list of sections agrees with that in the Bombay edition. It bears no date.

So much for what may be described as our primary sources of information on this subject. Let us now glance at the secondary sources. And, first, Nīlakaṇṭha in commenting on what is, according to his numbering, chapter XV, stanza 43, apparently distinguishes that chapter from what he speaks of as the Brāhmaṇa Gītā and Guruśiṣyasaṃvāda, which he implies follow after that chapter--thus indicating that he accepted in substance the tradition re corded in the passages We have already set forth, viz. that the first four chapters of our translation form the Anugītā, the next fifteen the Brāhmaṇa Gītā, and the last seventeen the Guruśiṣyasaṃvāda. This is also the view of Arjuna Miśra. At the close of his gloss on chapter IV, he distinctly states that the Anugītā ends at that chapter; and again at the close of the gloss on chapter XIX, he explicitly says that the Brāhmaṇa Gītā ends there. He also adds the following interesting observation: 'The feminine form (Gītā, namely) is used in consequence of (the word) Upaniṣad being feminine.' The full title of that part of the Mahābhārata would then be, according to this remark of Arjuna Miśra, 'the Upaniṣads sung by the Brāhmaṇa,' a title parallel to that of the Bhagavadgītā, 'the Upaniṣads sung by the Deity.' It is to be further remarked, that the last chapter of the Guruśiṣyasaṃvāda is called in this commentary the eighteenth chapter of the Guruśiṣyasaṃvāda, a fact which seems to indicate that Arjuna Miśra either found in the MS. which he used, or himself established, a separate numbering for the chapters in the several sections^[1] of which the Aśvamedha Parvan is made up.

Although the information here set out from these various sources is not easily to be harmonised in all its parts, the preponderance of testimony seems to he in favour of regarding the portion of the Aśvamedha Parvan embraced in our translation as containing three distinct sections, viz. the Anugītā, the Brāhmaṇa Gītā, and the Guruśiṣyasaṃvāda. And some indirect support may be derived for this conclusion, from one or two other circumstances. In the Sāṅkhya-sāra of Vijñāna Bhikṣu--a work which, as we shall see in the sequel, expressly mentions the Anugītā--we have a passage cited as from the 'Bhārata^[2]' which coincides almost precisely with a passage occurring at chapter XXVII of our translation (see p. 335). And, in the Bhāṣya of Śaṅkarācārya, on the Bhagavadgītā, chapter XV, stanza 1, we have a citation as from a 'Purāṇa' of a passage which coincides pretty closely with one which occurs at chapter XX of our translation (see p. 313). If the discrepancies between the quotations as given by Vijñāna Bhikṣu and Śaṅkara, and the passages occurring in our text, may be treated merely as various readings-and there is nothing inherently improbable in this being the case-it may be fairly contended, that neither Śaṅkara nor Vijñāna Bhikṣu would have used the vague expressions, 'a Purāṇa,' or even 'the Bhārata,' if they could have correctly substituted in lieu of them the specific name Anugītā. And this, it may be said, is a contention of some weight, when it is remembered, that both Śaṅkara and Vijñāna show, in other parts of their writings, an acquaintance with this very Anugītā. If this reasoning is correct, the conclusion to be derived from it must be, that Śaṅkara and Vijñāna must have considered the chapters of the Aśvamedha Parvan from which their respective quotations are taken as not forming part of the Anugītā.

The testimony we have thus collected is apparently of considerable weight. Against it, however, we have to weigh some testimony which appears to me to be entitled, upon the whole, to even greater weight. In the Sāṅkhya-sāra of Vijñāna Bhikṣu, to which we have already referred, we have two quotations^[3] from the Anugītā which are distinctly stated to be taken from that work. The first occurs in our translation at p. 332, the second at p. 313. Now, if we adopt the conclusion above referred to, regarding the correct titles of the thirty-six chapters which we have translated, it is a mistake to attribute the passages in question to the Anugītā. They would, on that view, form part of the Guruśiṣyasaṃvāda. Again, in his commentary on the Sanatsujātīya, Śaṅkara refers to sundry passages which he expressly says are taken from the Anugītā, but which are not contained in the Anugītā as limited by the evidence we have considered above. One of the passages referred to is taken from chapter XI of our translation, and others are contained in the comments on Sanatsujātīya I, 6, and on I, 20 and I, 41^[4]. It is difficult to resist the conclusion to which this positive evidence leads. One cannot possibly explain this evidence upon the view which we have first stated; while, on the other hand, the points which apparently support that view are capable of some explanation on the theory that the Anugītā includes all the chapters here translated. And that in this wise. The passages which we have referred to as cited by Śaṅkara and Vijñāna from a Purāna and from the Bhārata may have been actually taken from some other work than the Anugītā. Even waiving the fact that the readings are different,--though in regard especially to the quotation given by Śaṅkara it is not one to be entirely lost sight of,--there is this fact which is of great and almost conclusive weight on such a point as this, namely, that we have many instances of passages common, almost verbatim et literatim, to the Mahābhārata and other works. For one instance, take the very passage on which a chronological argument has been founded by us in the Introduction to the Sanatsujātīya^[5]. It ought to have been there pointed out, that the stanza about a young man being bound to rise to receive an elderly person, also occurs in the Manu Smṛti^[6] in exactly the same words. The omission to note this circumstance in its proper place in the Introduction to the Sanatsujātīya was due to a mere inadvertence. But the conclusion there hinted at was expressed in very, cautious language, and with many qualifications, out of regard to circumstances such as those which we are now considering. Similar repetitions may be pointed out in other places. The passage about the Kṣetrajña and Sattva and their mutual relations (see p. 374) occurs, as pointed out in the note there,. in at least two other places in the Mahābhārata. The passage likewise which occurs at Gītā, p. 103, about the 'hands, feet, &c., on all sides,' is one which may be seen, to my own knowledge, in about half a dozen places in the Mahābhārata. Such cases, I believe, may be easily multiplied; and they illustrate and are illustrated by Mr. Freeman's proposition respecting the epic age in Greece, to which we have already alluded. It follows, consequently, that the quotations from Śaṅkara and Vijñāna, to which we have referred above, do not militate very strongly against the final conclusion at which we have arrived. The testimony of the MSS. and the commentators is, no doubt, of considerably greater force. But Nīlakaṇṭha, whatever his merits as an exegete--and even these are often marred by a persistent effort to read his own foregone conclusions into the text he comments on Nīlakaṇṭha is but an indifferent authority in the domain of historical criticism. In his commentary on the Sanatsujātīya, for instance, he tells us that he has admitted into his text sundry verses which were not in the copy used by Śaṅkara, and for which he had none but a very modern voucher, and he very naively adds that he has done so on the principle of collecting all good things to a focus. Arjuna Miśra is a very much more satisfactory commentator. But he is not likely to be a writer of much antiquity. I assume, that he must be more recent than Saṅkarācārya, though I cannot say that I have any very tenable ground for the assumption. But assuming that, I think it more satisfactory to adopt Saṅkarācārya's nomenclature, and to treat the thirty-six chapters here translated as constituting the Anugītā. It is not improbable, if our assumption is correct, that the division of the thirty-six chapters in the manner we have seen may have come into vogue after the date of Vijñāna Bhikṣu, who, according to Dr. F. E. Hall, 'lived in all probability in the sixteenth or seventeenth century, and whom there is some slight reason for carrying back still further^[7].'

Do these thirty-six chapters, then, form one integral work? Are they all the work of one and the same author? These are the questions which next present themselves for consideration. The evidence bearing upon them, however, is, as might be expected, excessively scanty. Of external evidence, indeed, we have really none, barring Saṅkara's statement in his commentary on the Bṛhadāraṇyaka-upaniṣad^[8] that the verse which he there quotes from the Anugītā has Vyāsa for its author. That statement indicates that Śaṅkara accepted the current tradition of Vyāsa's authorship of the Anugītā; and such acceptance, presumably, followed from his acceptance of the tradition of Vyāsa's authorship of the entire Mahābhārata. If that tradition is incorrect, and Vyāsa is not the author of the Anugītā, we have no means of ascertaining who is the author. And as to the tradition in question, it is difficult, in the present state of our materials, to form any satisfactory judgment. We therefore proceed at once to consider whether the Anugītā is really one work. And I must admit at the outset that I find it difficult to answer this question. There are certainly some circumstances connected with the work which might be regarded as indicating a different authorship of different parts of it. Thus in an early portion of the work, we find the first personal pronoun is used, where the Supreme Being is evidently intended to be signified, and yet the passage is not put into the mouth of Kṛṣṇa, but of the Brāhmaṇa. A similar passage occurs a little later on also. Now it must be taken to be a somewhat strained interpretation of the words used in the passages in question to suppose that the speaker there used the first personal pronoun, identifying himself for the nonce with the Supreme Being^[9]. Again, in a passage still further on, we have the vocative O Pārtha! where the person addressed is not Arjuna at all, but the Brāhmaṇa's wife. Now these lapses are susceptible of two explanations--either we are to see in them so many cases of 'Homer nodding,' or we may suppose that they are errors occasioned by one writer making additions to the work of a previous writer, without a vivid recollection of the framework of the original composition into which his own work had to be set^[10]. I own, that on balancing the probabilities on the one side and the other, my mind rather leans to the hypothesis of one author making a slip in the plexus of his own story within story, rather than the hypothesis of a deliberate interpolator forgetting the actual scheme of the original work into which he was about to foist his own additions^[11]. And this the rather, that we find a similar slip towards the very beginning of the work, where we have the Brāhmaṇa Kāśyapa addressed as Parantapa, or destroyer of foes--an epithet which, I think, is exclusively reserved for Kṣatriyas, and is, in any case, a very inappropriate one to apply to a humble seeker for spiritual light. This slip appears to me to be incapable of explanation on any theory of interpolation^[12]. And hence the other slips above noted can hardly be regarded as supporting any such theory. Another circumstance, not indeed bearing out that theory, but rendering interpolations possible, deserves to be noted. The scheme of the Anugītā certainly lends itself to interpolations. A story might without much difficulty be added to the series of story joined to story which it contains. Against this, however, it must not be forgotten, that the Śānti Parvan of the Mahābhārata, and the Yogavāsiṣṭha exhibit a precisely similar framework of contents, and that the Pañcatantra and the Kathāsaritsāgara, among other works, follow the same model. And from this fact it may, be fairly argued, that while there is, doubtless, room for suspecting interpolations in such cases, there is this to be remembered, that with respect to any particular one of these cases, such suspicion can carry us but a very short way. And further, it is to be observed, valeat quantum, that the connexion of the several chapters of the Anugītā one with the other is not altogether a loose one, save at one or two points only, while they are all linked on to the main body of the narrative, only in what we have treated as the last chapter of the Anugītā, without any trace of any other connecting link anywhere else. Upon the whole, therefore, we here conclude, though not without doubt, that the whole of the Anugītā is the work of one author.

The next question to be discussed is the important one of the age of the work. The quotations already given above from Saṅkarācārya's works, and one other which is referred to in the note below^[13], suffice to show that the Anugītā must have been some few centuries old in the time of Saṅkarācārya. For whether we treat the Anugītā as a part of the original Mahābhārata or not, it is not likely that such a scholar as Śaṅkara would have accepted the book as a genuine part of the Mahābhārata, and as a work of Vyāsa, if it had not been in his day of some respectable antiquity, of antiquity sufficient to have thrown the real author into oblivion, and to have substituted in his place Vyāsa, who lived at the junction of the Dvāpara and Kali ages^[14], upwards of thirty centuries before the Christian era. The calculation is avowedly a very rough one, but I think we may, as the result of it, safely fix the third century of the Christian era as the latest date at which the Anugītā can have been composed. Let us now endeavour to find out whether we can fix the date as lying within any better defined period. It is scarcely needful to say, that the Anugītā dates from a period considerably subsequent to the age of the Upaniṣads. The passages relating to the Prāṇasaṃvāda and so forth, which occur originally in the Upaniṣads, are referred to in the Anugītā as 'ancient stories'--an indication that the Upaniṣads had already come to be esteemed as ancient compositions at the date of the latter work. It is not necessary, therefore, to go through an elaborate examination of the versions of the ancient stories alluded to above, as contained in the Upaniṣads and in the Anugītā, more especially because it is possible for us to show that the Anugītā is later than the Bhagavadgītā, which latter work, as we have seen, is later than the Upaniṣads. And to this point we shall now address ourselves. We have already observed upon the story referred to at the opening of this Introduction, which, historically interpreted, indicates the priority of the Bhagavadgītā to the Anugītā. This conclusion is confirmed by sundry other circumstances, which we must now discuss in some detail, as they are also of use in helping to fix the position of the work in the history of Sanskrit literature and philosophy. First, then, it seems to me, that the state of society mirrored in the Anugītā indicates a greater advance in social evolution than we have already seen is disclosed in the Bhagavadgītā. Not to mention decorations of houses and so forth, which are alluded to in one passage of the Anugītā, we are here told of royal oppressions, of losses of wealth accumulated with great difficulty, and of fierce captivities; we are told, to adapt the language of a modern English poet, of laws grinding the weak, for strong men rule the law; we have references to the casting of images with liquefied iron, and to the use of elephants as vehicles^[15]; and we meet with protests against the amusements of music and dancing, and against the occupation of artisans^[16]. True it is, that all these indications put together, fail to constitute according to the standard of modern times, would be called a highly artificial state of society. But it seems to me to mark a very perceptible and distinct advance beyond the social condition in which mankind was divided into four castes or classes, with such a division of duties, to put it briefly, as that of preparation for a future world, government of this world, agriculture and trade, and service respectively^[17]. Artisans, it will be observed, are not even referred to in the Bhagavadgītā, nor is there any trice of royal oppressions, or unequal laws. Then as regards music, it may be noted, that there are references to it in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka and Kauṣītaki-upaniṣads^[18], without any indications of disapprobation. The protest against music, therefore, and the sister art of dancing, is probably to be explained as evoked by some abuses of the two arts which must have come into prevalence about the time of the composition of the Anugītā. A similar protest is found recorded in the Dharmaśāstras of Manu and Āpastamba and Gautama^[19]. We shall consider in the sequel the chronological positions of the Anugītā with reference to those Dharmasāstras. But we have already pointed out that the Gītā stands prior to them both^[20].

Look again at the views on caste which are embodied in the Anugītā, and the Bhagavadgītā respectively. The reference to the Kṣatriya as representing the quality of passion, while the Brāhmaṇa represents the quality of goodness^[21], seems to place a considerably larger distance between the Brāhmaṇa, and the Kṣatriya than is suggested by the Bhagavadgītā, and thus marks an advance in the direction of the later doctrine on the subject. And in connexion with this, perhaps, the discrepancy between the reading of the Bhagavadgītā at p. 85, and that of the Anugītā at p. 255, is not entirely without significance, though much weight would not be due to it, if it stood alone. The expression 'devoted royal sages,' which we find in- the one work, makes way for 'well-read Kṣatriyas who are intent on their own duties' in the other. Again, although the passage at p. 353 is undoubtedly susceptible of a different interpretation, it seems to me, that the word 'twice-born' there employed, was meant to be interpreted as meaning the Brāhmaṇas, and not the three twice-born castes; and if this interpretation is correct, we have here the very proposition upon the absence of which in the Bhagavadgītā we have already made some observations^[22]. That twice-born in the passage in question means Brāhmaṇa only, is, of course, not a proved fact. But-having regard to the passages noted above and to the passage at p. 320, where reference is made to disparagement of Brāhmaṇas--it is not twice-born there--and in the same clause with disparagement of gods and Vedas, it seems to me that the interpretation we have suggested must be taken to be the true one. And it is to be further noted, that this conclusion is corroborated by a comparison of the passage now under consideration with a passage occurring in the Śānti Parvan^[23], in the Rājadharma section of it, where we read that 'the cow is the first among quadrupeds, gold among metals, a mantra among words, and the Brāhmaṇa is the first among bipeds.' The cow and gold occur in the passage in the Anugītā also, very near the clause we are now discussing. And it is allowable to argue, that reading the two together, twice-born in the Anugītā must be interpreted to be synonymous with Brāhmaṇa in the Rājadharma. And the same conclusion is, to my mind, confirmed indirectly by comparing the clause 'the twice-born among men' of the Anugītā with 'the ruler of men among men of that Bhagavadgītā, the teaching of which the former work professes to recapitulate.

A similar inference seems to be derivable from a comparison of the specific doctrines as to the duties of Brāhmaṇas which are enunciated in the Gītā and the Anugītā. In the latter work, the famous six duties are expressly mentioned. We have already argued in our Introduction to the Gītā, that a comparison of the teaching of that work upon this point with the teaching of Āpastamba and Manu shows the former to have been older than the latter. The six duties mentioned in the Anugītā are those also mentioned by Manu and Āpastamba. It follows, therefore, that the Gītā is prior to the Anugītā also. Whether the Anugītā is prior or subsequent to Manu and Āpastamba, is a question which will have to be discussed in the sequel.

The net result of the whole of this comparison appears to me to clearly show the Anugītā to be a work of considerably more recent date than the Bhagavadgītā. What interval of time lay between the two, is a most interesting, but also a most difficult, question. The differences we have noted appear to me to indicate a pretty wide interval. If I am right in regarding the Gītā as a work of what may be called, for practical purposes, the age of the older Upaniṣads, I am inclined to think that the interval between the Gītā, and the Anugītā must have been one of larger extent than even three or four centuries. For as we have already pointed put, the description of the various 'Itihāsas' mentioned in the Anugītā as 'purātana'--ancient--points to at least three or four centuries having elapsed between the close of the Upaniṣad period and the composition of the Anugītā. It is obvious, however, that this result is not one with which we can rest satisfied. Even if it were more precise and accurate, it would only fix the age of the Anugītā with reference to the age of another work itself of unknown and unascertained date. We must therefore endeavour to compare the Anugītā with some other work, the date of which is better known. For this purpose, it seems to be not of any great use to refer to the Sankhya and Yoga-sūtras, although it is not improbable that some materials might be forthcoming for a useful comparison between them and the Anugītā. Neither the Sāṅkhya nor the Yoga-sūtras can be said to have their ages fixed with even any approach to accuracy. And in the case of the Sāṅkhya-sūtras there is the further difficulty presented by the circumstance, that there is room for very serious doubts as to whether the current Sūtras are really of the authorship of Kapila, or whoever else was the original founder of the system. With regard to the Yoga, one or two observations from a different point of view may not, however, be entirely out of place. At p. 248 the Yoga Śāstra is referred to eo nomine. What Śāstra is here alluded to? Is it Patañjali's, or some other Śāstra dealing with similar topics? Or, again, is it an entirely different matter that is alluded to, and are we not to see in the expression in question an allusion to any system formally propounded? I own, as stated in the note on the passage, that my mind inclines to the last view. There is not very much to say on either side of the question, as far as I am able to understand it. But the view I incline to appears to have one small circumstance in its favour. At p. 249 we have an allusion to persons who understand the Yoga, and to a certain illustration propounded by them. Now who are these persons? My limited knowledge of Yoga literature has not enabled me to trace the illustration anywhere else than in the Kaṭhopaniṣad, and in the Sanatsujātīya. It seems to me very unlikely, that the illustration can have been put forward in any work older than the Kathopaniṣad. And we may, I think, assume it as most probable that the Sanatsujātīya borrowed it from that work. If so, it is not likely that the Anugītā can have referred to any other master of the Yoga than, the author of the Kathopaniṣad. And then it would seem to follow, that the Anugītā must have been composed at a time when, although the Upaniṣads were looked on with reverence and as works of authority, they were not yet regarded as part and parcel of the Vedic revelation^[24]. It is impossible not to perceive, that the train of reasoning here is at every stage hedged round with difficulties and doubts. And the inference therefore to which we are led by it must be accepted with proportionate caution. But if the reasoning is correct, it seems to be certain, that the Anugītā belongs to some period prior to the second, and probable, that it belongs to some period prior to the third century, before Christ. For in the second century before Christ was composed the Mahābhāṣya of Patañjali, in which Rahasyas--which is another name for Upaniṣads--are mentioned as forming part of the Vedic literature. And in Āpastamba's Dharma-sūtras, which are older than Patañjali, Upaniṣads^[25] are mentioned in the same way. I am aware that it may be said, that because Upaniṣads as a class of works are mentioned by Patañjali and Āpastamba, it does not follow that any particular Upaniṣad, such as the Kaṭha, for instance, also existed at that time. This is quite true. But without going now into the general question, it is sufficient to point out, that on. argument here is concerned merely with the recognition of the Upaniṣads as a class of works forming part of the Vedic canon. Such recognition must have come later than the period at which the Anugītā could speak of a passage in the Kaṭha-upaniṣad as the utterance of Yogavids, or persons who understood the Yoga.

Turning now to the materials available for ascertaining the relative chronological positions of the Anugītā and the rise of Buddhism, we have again to complain of their unsatisfactory character. We will briefly note the two or three circumstances which appear to have a bearing upon this question. In the first place, we have the word Nirvāṇa used in one passage of the Anugītā in the sense of the highest tranquillity, and there the simile of the extinction of the fire Is expressly adduced. On this it may be argued, that if the term Nirvāṇa had become the well-understood property of Buddhism, such a use of it as we find here would probably not have occurred. Again, we have the injunction that an ascetic must dwell in a town only for one day and no more, while he may, stay at one place during the rains. This is very similar to an injunction prescribed by the Buddhistic teachers also. But this fact furnishes, I think, no safe ground for a chronological inference, more especially because, as pointed out by Dr. Bühler, the Buddhistic injunction is itself only borrowed from the Brahmanical rules on the subject^[26]. It is impossible, therefore, to say that the Anugītā borrowed its doctrine from Buddhism. It is, of course, equally impossible on the other hand to say, that Buddhism borrowed its rule from the Anugītā. And, therefore, we can build no safe inference upon this fact either. We have next the very remarkable passage at chapter XXXIV, where various contradictory and mutually exclusive views of piety are stated, or rather passingly and briefly indicated--a passage which one most devoutly wishes had been clearer than it is. In that passage I can find no reference to Buddhism. True it is that Nīlakaṇṭha's commentary refers some of the doctrines there stated to Buddhistic schools^[27]. But that commentary, unsatisfactory enough in other places, is particularly unsatisfactory here. And its critical accuracy may be judged from its reference to Saugatas and Yogācāras apparently as two distinct schools, whereas in truth the Saugatas are Buddhists, and Yogācāras one of the four principal Buddhist sects. And it must be further remembered, that the interpretations of Nīlakaṇṭha, upon which his specifications of the different schools are based, are by no means such as necessarily claim acceptance. If then we d o not find any reference to Buddhism in this passage, that fact becomes certainly a remarkable one. Still, on the other hand, I am not prepared to apply the 'negative argument' here, and to say that inasmuch as Buddhism is not referred to where so many different opinions are referred to, Buddhism cannot have come into existence at the date of the Anugītā. It seems to me that the argument will here be a very hazardous one, because if the author of the Anugītā was, as we may assume he was, an orthodox Hindu, he might well have declined, although not unacquainted with Buddhism, to put into the mouths of the-seven sages even as a possible view, that which was the view of a school esteemed heretical by the author and his co-religionists. This passage, therefore, also fails to furnish any tangible ground for a chronological inference, at all events in the present state of our knowledge. Lastly, we come to the allusion to those who indulge in constant talk in disparagement of Vedas and Brāhmaṇas, the two being thus bracketed together in the original. That seems, at the first blush, to be a somewhat more distinct allusion to Buddhism than any of those we have noted above. But even that is not unambiguous. If the stanzas quoted by Mādhavācārya, in his Sarvadarśanasaṅgraha in its first section, are the composition of the original founder of the Cārvāka school, or even if they correctly represent the earliest opinions of that school, it is at least quite as likely that the Cārvākas were the target for the denunciations of the Anugītā in the passage in question as that the Buddhists were so. To me, indeed, it appears to be more likely. For Buddha's opinion with regard to the Vedas is, that they are inadequate; with regard to the Brāhmaṇas, that they are in no sense the chosen of God as they claim to be. The opinion of the Cārvākas, on the other hand, is a far, more aggressive one, so to say. According to Mādhavācārya, they taught that the Vedas were either simple fatuity or imposture, and that the Brāhmaṇas were impostors. It seems to me much more likely, that this, which I have called a comparatively aggressive attitude, was the one at which the remarks of the Anugītā were levelled; and more especially does this appear to be correct when we remember, that the view taught by Gautama Buddha regarding the Vedas and the Brāhmaṇas was propounded by him only in its strongest form; and that even before his time, the doctrine of the inadequacy of the Vedas for the purpose of securing the summum bonum of humanity had been taught by other teachers. It is further to be recollected, that we have evidence showing that other thinkers also than Buddha, or Bṛhaspati, had in early days attacked the authority of the Vedas. Kautsa is the name of one who was probably the most distinguished among them. It is certainly possible that his followers were the people branded as of 'the dark quality' by the Anugītā in the passage in question. We have, therefore, at least two different recognised bodies of thinkers, and one individual thinker, to whom the words under discussion may apply, and it is plainly unsafe, under these circumstances, to draw any chronological inference based on the hypothesis of one particular body out of those three being the one intended by the author. Before closing this part of the investigation, it may be interesting to note, that the phrase 'turning the wheel,' a phrase now so familiar to us as one of the household words of Buddhism, is used in the Anugītā with respect to King Janaka. I do not think, however, that either alone, or even coupled with the word Nirvāna, that phrase can be made the basis of any legitimate deduction in favour of the priority of the Anugītā, to Buddhism. At the outside, the only deduction admissible, if any deduction were admissible, would be, that the Anugītā was composed prior to the recognition, of Nirvāṇa and Cakrapravartana as specially Buddhistic words. But priority to such recognition is not, I apprehend, necessarily synonymous with priority to the rise of Buddhism.

The net result of this part of the investigation appears to be, that we have pretty strong grounds for holding the Anugītā to belong to a period very considerably removed from the period of the Upaniṣads and the Bhagavadgītā; but that we have no tangible grounds on which to base any deduction regarding its priority or otherwise to the Sāṅkhya, and Yoga systems of philosophy, or to the great movement of Gautama Buddha. There is only one other point, which we can establish in a not entirely unsatisfactory way, and which enables us to draw closer the limits within which the Anugītā must have been composed. That point is the position of the Anugītā with reference to Āpastamba's Dharma-sūtra. I need not say again, that I accept here the proposition about the age of Āpastamba which has been laid down by Dr. Bühler, as a sufficiently satisfactory working hypothesis. And accepting that proposition, I venture to suggest the fourth century B.C. as a not unlikely date for the Anugītā. It appears to me, that a comparison of the Anugītā and the rules of Āpastamba upon one important point which they both deal with shows the priority of the former work. I allude to the rules and regulations touching the four Āśramas or orders contained in the Anugītā and in the Dharma-sūtra of Āpastamba. One circumstance strikes us at once on I comparing the two works on this point. Āpastamba goes into a very great deal of minute details more than the Anugītā, although the latter work does not deal with the topic in any very summary mode. Taking all the differences between the two works together, and the fact that the Anugītā sets about the discussion of the topic in a manner which seems intended to be--not, indeed, absolutely exhaustive, but still--very full, I am very strongly inclined to attribute the differences. to an actual development and progress of doctrine. I will endeavour to illustrate this view by means of a few detailed instances^[28]. And let us first take the order of householders to which the Anugītā gives precedence over the others. One of the injunctions laid down by the Anugītā is that the householder should always be devoted to his wife. Against this simple precept, we have a very minute series of rules prescribed by Āpastamba, which it is not necessary to refer to specifically, but which may be seen in several of the Sūtras contained in the first Khaṇḍa of the first Paṭala of the Second Praśna. Compare again the excessive minuteness of the rules regarding the Bali-offering or the reception of guests, as given by Āpastamba, with the simple statement of the Anugītā that the five great sacrifices should be performed. There again, I think, we are to see in this difference of treatment the result of a pretty long course of ceremonial progress. Proceeding to the rules regarding the Brahmacārin or student, an analogous phenomenon meets us there. Taking first the subject of food, we have a considerable number of detailed injunctions in Āpastamba, compared with the simple rule of the Anugītā, that the student should, with the leave of his preceptor, eat his food without decrying it. Again with regard to alms, whereas the Anugītā simply says that the student should take his food out of the alms received by him, Āpastamba has an elaborate catena of rules as to how the alms are to be collected, and from whom, and so forth. Take again the provisions in the two works regarding the description of the cloth, staff, and girdle of the student. Āpastamba refers to various opinions on this subject, of which there is not even a trace in the Anugītā^[29]. It appears that even before Āpastamba's time, distinctions had been laid down as to the description of girdle staff and cloth to be used by the different castes--distinctions of which there is no hint in the Anugītā, where all students, of whatever caste, are spoken of under the generic name. These distinctions appear to me to point very strongly to that ceremonial and doctrinal progress of which we have spoken above. The tendency is visible in them to sever the Brāhmaṇas from the other castes--by external marks. And that tendency, it seems to me, must have set in, as the merits which had given the Brāhmaṇa caste its original position at the head of Hindu society were ceasing to be a living reality, and that caste was intrenching itself, so to say, more behind the worth and work of the early founders of its greatness, than the worth and work of their degenerating representatives. These comparisons, taken together, appear to me to warrant the proposition we have already laid down with regard to the priority of the Anugītā to Āpastamba. If we have not referred to the rules relating to the two other orders of forester and ascetic, it is because the scope for a comparison of those is very limited. Those rules alone would scarcely authorise the inference drawn above; but I can perceive nothing in them to countervail the effect of the comparisons already made. And it must be remembered, that the rules as to foresters and ascetics would be less apt to undergo change than chose as to students and householders.

It appears to me that the view we have now expressed may be also supported by a comparison of the doctrines of the Anugītā and Āpastamba touching the duties of Brāhmaṇas. According to Āpastamba, the occupations lawful to Brāhmaṇas are the famous six referred to in our Introduction to the Bhagavadgītā, and two others superadded, namely, inheritance and gleaning corn in the fields. These last are not mentioned in the Anugītā, or in Manu either, and are, even according to Āpastamba, common to Brāhmaṇas with Kṣatriyas and Vaiśyas. But as regards the six above referred to, it is worthy of note, that the Anugītā apparently groups them into two distinct sets of three. The first set of three consists of those which, in our Introduction to the Bhagavadgītā, we have characterised as constituting rather the rights than the duties of Brāhmaṇas, and which the Anugītā describes as 'means of livelihood for Brāhmanas.' The other set of three consists of real duties, and these the Anugītā speaks of as 'pious duties.' This grouping appears to me to furnish powerful corroboration of the view put forward in our introduction to the Bhagavadgītā. It would seem, that the possession of the moral and spiritual merits which, according to the Gītā, constituted the duty of Brāhmaṇas, in the simple and archaic society there disclosed, was developed, in a more advanced and artificial state of society, into the performance of the 'pious duties' of the Anugītā and the duties which are 'the means of livelihood.' Then in the further social evolution, in the course of which the old spiritual view began to be forgotten, and the actual facts of the past began to be transmuted into the dogmatic rules of the future, the occupations of receiving presents, imparting instruction, and officiating at sacrifices, became the special occupations of the Brāhmaṇas, and the distinction between these occupations from their higher duties was thrown into the background; and accordingly we find no allusion to any such distinction in Āpastamba or Manu, or, as far as I know, in any other later embodiment of the current ideas on the subject^[30]. If all this has been correctly argued, the conclusion derivable from it is in entire accord with that which we have already drawn, namely, that the Bhagavadgītā, the Anugītā, and the Dharma-sūtra of Āpastamba, belong to different stages of ancient Indian history, and that the stage to which the Gītā belongs is the earliest, and that to which Āpastamba belongs, the latest of such stages.

I am unable to find anything else in the way of internal evidence bearing upon the date of the Anugītā. It appears to me, that the date to which the investigation we have now gone through leads us, is one which, in the present state of our information, may be fairly accepted as a provisional hypothesis. It does not appear to me to conflict with any ascertained dates, while it is pointed to as probable by the various lines of testimony which we have here considered. We now proceed to discuss one or two other points which may have a bearing upon this topic, but which at present cannot yield us any positive guidance in our search for the date of the Anugītā. And first among these, let us consider the various names of deities that occur in different parts of the work. We have, then, Viṣṇu, Śambhu, Giṣṇu, Soma, Āditya, Surya, Mitra, Agni, Candra, Rudra, Śiva, Varuṇa, Prajāpati, Maghavat, Purandara, Indra, Brahman, Śatakratu, Dharma, Nārāyaṇa, Vāyu, Yama, Tvashtri, Hari, Īśvara, and lastly Umā under three different names, namely, Umā, Māheśvarī, and Pārvatī. Now, leaving aside for the moment the three names of Umā, which appear from the passage where they are used to be all three the names of the same goddess, there is no doubt that in the list above set out, some of the names are merely used in different passages, but still to indicate the same being. Thus, Indra, Satakratu, Purandara, and Maghavat are really the names of one and the same deity. But when Soma is mentioned as the deity presiding over the tongue, and Candramas as the deity presiding over the mind, it becomes doubtful whether the two names do really indicate the same deity, albeit in later Sanskrit Soma and Candramas both signify the moon. Similarly, when Arka is said to be the deity presiding over the eye, and Mitra over another organ, it seems open to question whether Arka and Mitra both signify the sun there, as they undoubtedly do in classical Sanskrit. True it is, that even in such a recent work as the Sāṅkhya-sāra, this mention of Arka and Mitra as presiding deities of two several organs does occur. But it is plain, that that circumstance can have, no bearing on the inquiry before its, for the Sāṅkhya-sāra is avowedly a compilation based on older authorities, and in the particular part under consideration, really reproduces a passage from some older work. It cannot, therefore, be argued, that because Arka and Mitra were identified with one another at the time of the Sāṅkhya-sāra, and yet are mentioned as deities of two separate organs, therefore, they must have also been regarded as one in the older original work where they are also mentioned as deities of two separate organs. And it may, perhaps, be remarked here in passing, that the Vedānta Paribhāṣā has Mṛtyu instead of Mitra, which would get rid of the difficulty here altogether; while as regards Soma and Candramas, the passage in the Sāṅkhya-sāra reads Pracetas instead of Soma, which would get rid of the other difficulty above pointed out. Whether these discrepancies are owing to any tampering with the lists of organs and deities, at a time when the later identifications between different deities took place, or whether they are to be explained on some other theory, it is impossible at present to say. And, therefore, it is also unnecessary to pursue the inquiry here any further. It must suffice for the present to have drawn attention to the matter.

Akin to this point, though quite distinct from it, is one which arises on a passage where the emancipated being is identified with Viṣṇu, Mitra, Agni, Varuna, and Prajāpati^[31]. Now it is reasonable to suppose, that the deities thus specified here must have been among those held in highest repute at the time, the whole significance of the passage where they are mentioned requiring that that should be so. But in our Pantheon as disclosed by our later literature, Mitra and Agni and Varuna occupy but a very subordinate position. Even in Kālidāsa^[32], the subordination of these deities to our celebrated Trinity seems to be quite fully established. But, on the other hand, in the Vedic theogony they are among the most prominent deities. In the Taittirīya-upaniṣad, we have in the very first sentence Mitra, Varuṇa, Viṣṇu, and Brahman (who may be identified with Prajāpati) all mentioned together, and their blessings invoked. This does not help in fixing a date for the Anugītā; but it lends some support to the conclusion already arrived at on that point, by showing that the theogony of the Anugītā is not yet very far removed from the theogony of the Vedic times, while it is separated by a considerable interval from the theogony disclosed in the works of even such an early writer of the classical period' as Kālidāsa.

Another point of similar bearing on our present investigation is the mode in which the story of Paraśurāma is dealt with in the Anugītā. There is in the first place no allusion to his being an incarnation of Viṣṇu, nor to the encounter between him and his namesake, the son of Daśaratha and the hero of the Rāmāyaṇa. We have, on the contrary, an explicit statement, that after the advice of the 'Pitṛs' he entirely abandons the slaughter of the Kṣatriyas, and resorting to penance thereby achieves final emancipation. We have elsewhere argued^[33], that the theory of Paraśurāma being an incarnation of Viṣṇu, must have probably originated prior to the time of Bhartṛhari, but later than the time of Kālidāsa. The allusion to Parasurāma in the work before us does not, however, enable us to judge of its chronological position with reference to Kālidāsa. But the last point discussed renders it unnecessary to consider this question further. It may be noted, by the way, that the Anugītā represents Paraśurāma, although living in the Āśrama or hermitage of his father, who was a Ṛṣi, as mounting a chariot for the purpose of sweeping away the kinsmen of Kārtavīrya. Whence he obtained a chariot in a hermitage, the Anugītā does not explain.

In connexion with the episode of Parasurāma, may be noted the list which occurs in the course of it, of the degraded Kṣatriya tribes, of Draviḍas, Sabaras, &c. I am unable to see that those names can give us any further help in our present investigation than in so far as they show that, at the time of the Anugītā, there must have been some information about the south of India available in the districts where the author of the Anugītā lived. Some of the tribes mentioned appear to have been located far in the south of the Indian peninsula. But this is a point on which we shall have to say something more in discussing, the next item of internal evidence to which we shall refer. Here it is enough to point out that some of the tribes mentioned in the Anugītā are also referred to in no less a work than the Aitareya-brāhmaṇa^[34].

We come next to the enumeration of the principal mountains which is contained in one passage of the Anugītā. Those mountains are the Himālaya, the Pāriyātra, the Sahya, the Vindhya, the. Trikūṭavat, the Śveta, the Nīla, the Bhāsa, the Koṣṭhavat, the Mahendra, the Mālyavat, and perhaps the Guruskandha. I am not sure whether the last name is intended to be taken as a proper name, or only as an epithet of Mahendra. Now compared with the mountains mentioned in the Bhagavadgītā, this is certainly a remarkable list. The Gītā mentions only Meru^[35] and Himālaya; while here we have in the Anugītā the Sahya,. and Malaya, and Trikūṭavat, and Nīla (the same, I presume, with the modem Nīlgiri, the Sanatarium of the Madras Presidency), which take us far to the west and south of the Indian peninsula; and the Mahendra and Mālyavat, which, coupled with the mention of the river Ganges, cover a considerable part of the eastern districts. The Pariyātra and Vindhya occupy the regions of Central India. The Anugītā, therefore, seems to belong to that period in the history of India, when pretty nearly the whole, if not absolutely the whole, of the Indian continent was known to the Sanskrit-speaking population of the country. When was this knowledge reached? It is difficult to fix the precise period; and even if it could be fixed, it would not help us to fix satisfactorily any point of time to which the Anugītā could be attributed. But it may be pointed out here, that in Patañjali's Mahābhāṣya we have evidence of such knowledge having been possessed by the Āryas in the second century B.C. In truth, the evidence available in the Mahābhāṣya is even fuller than this in the Anugītā. For Patañjali tells us of a town or city in the south named Kāñkipura^[36]; he speaks of the dominions of the Pāṇḍya kings, and of the Kola and Kerala districts^[37]; he refers also to the large tanks of the south; and he makes allusions to linguistic usages current in the southern and other provinces^[38]. Before Patañjali's time there had taken place Mahendra's invasion of Ceylon, and the invading army must have penetrated through the southern provinces. And there had been also put up the great Inscriptions of Asoka, which have attracted so much interest, and are proving such prolific sources of information in various departments of knowledge. One of these inscriptions was at Gañjam, which is not very far from the Mahendra mountain alluded to in the Anugītā^[39]. All these facts support the conclusion drawn by General Cunningham from the correctness of the information given to Alexander the Great by the Hindus of his time, namely, that 'the Indians, even at that early date in their history, had a very accurate knowledge of the form and extent of their native land^[40].' And not only do they support that conclusion, they show that the knowledge covered other facts regarding their native land than its form and extent. It follows consequently that this enumeration of mountains does not require the date of the Anugītā to be brought down to a later period than the fourth century B.C., and leaves it open to us, therefore, to accept whatever conclusion the other evidence available may seem to justify. On the other hand, it is plain also, that it affords no positive information as to when the Anugītā was composed, and therefore we need not dwell any further upon the point on the present occasion.

There are a few other points which arise upon the contents of the Anugītā, but which are not, in the present condition of our knowledge, capable of affording any certain guidance in our present investigation. Thus we have the story of Dharma appearing before king Janaka disguised as a Brāhmaṇa. I am not aware of any case of such disguises occurring in any of the Upaniṣads, although there are numerous parallel instances throughout the Purānik literature^[41]. It is, however, difficult to draw any definite chronological inference from this fact. There is further the reference to the attack of Rāhu on the sun. It is difficult, in the present state of our knowledge, to say for certain, when the theory of eclipses there implied was prevalent. In the Chāndogya-upaniṣad^[42] we have the emancipated self compared to the moon escaped from the mouth of Rāhu. And a text of the Rig-veda, quoted by Mr. Yajñesvara Śāstrin in his Āryavidyāsudhākara^[43], speaks of the demon Rāhu attacking the sun with darkness. Here again we have another matter of some interest; but I cannot see that any safe deduction can be derived from it, without a more ample knowledge of other relevant matters than is at present accessible. Take again the references to certain practices which look very much like the practices of the Jainas of the present day. Is the Anugītā, then, earlier or later than the rise of the Jaina system? It is not safe, I think, to found an answer to this question upon the very narrow basis afforded by the passage referred to. But it may be observed, that the precepts laid down in the passage in question are laid down as precepts for orthodox Hindus, and not as the doctrines of a heretical sect. They are also very general, and not so minute as those which the Jainas of the present day observe as binding upon them. If, therefore, any conclusion is to be drawn from these precepts, it must be that the Anugītā must have been composed prior to the rise of Jainism; and that Jainism must have appropriated and developed this doctrine which it obtained from the current Brāhmanism^[44]. If this is so, the Anugītā must be a very ancient work indeed. It is not, however, necessary to further work out this line of argument, having regard to the opinions recently expressed by Mr. Thomas^[45], rehabilitating the views enunciated long ago by Colebrooke and others. If those views are correct, and if Jainism was a dominant system in this country prior even to the time of Gautama Buddha, and if, further, we are right in the suggestion--for it is no more it must be remembered--that the Anugītā dates from a period prior to the rise of Jainism, then it would seem to follow that the Anugītā belongs to some period prior to the sixth century B.C. All this, however, is at present very hypothetical, and we draw attention to it only that the question may be hereafter considered when fuller materials for adjudicating upon it become accessible. Meanwhile, having regard to the views above alluded to as so elaborately put forward by Mr. Thomas, it is possible for us still to hold that, in the present state of our knowledge, the third or fourth century B.C. is not too early a date to, assign to the Anugītā, even on the assumption that the precepts contained in that work regarding the care to be taken of worms and insects were borrowed by it from the Jaina system. With this negative result, we must for the present rest contented.

One other fact of similar nature to those we have now dealt with may, perhaps, be also noticed here. We allude to the stanzas which we find in the Anugītā and also in the Sānti Parvan of the Mahābhārata and in the Manusmṛti. There is also one which the Anugītā has in common with the Pariśiṣṭa of Yāska's Nirukta^[46]. It is not possible, I conceive, to say finally whether one of these works borrowed these stanzas from the other of them; while, on the other hand, it is quite possible, as already argued by us in the Introduction to the Gītā, that all these works were only reproducing from some entirely different work, or that the stanzas in question were the common property of the thinkers of the time. We have no means available for deciding between these conflicting hypotheses.

We have thus noticed all the salient points in the evidence, external and internal, which is available for determining the position of the Anugītā in our ancient literature. Nobody who has seen even a little of the history of that literature will be surprised at the quantity or quality of that evidence, or the nature of the conclusions legitimately yielded by it. We have endeavoured to express those conclusions in language which should not indicate any greater certainty as attaching to them than can fairly be claimed for them. The net result appears to be this. The Anugītā may be taken with historical certainty to have been some centuries old in the time of the great Sankarācārya. It was very probably older than the Dharma-sūtras of Āpastamba, but by what period of time we are not in a position at present to define. It was, perhaps, older also than the rise of Buddhism and Gainism, and of the Yoga philosophy; but on this it is impossible to say anything with any approach to confidence. It is, on the other hand, almost certain that it belongs to a period very considerably removed from the older Upaniṣads.; probably removed by a distance of some centuries, during which 'stories' not contained in the Upaniṣads had not only obtained currency, but also come to be regarded as belonging to antiquity^[47]. And yet the period to which the work belongs was one in which the Upaniṣads were only reverenced as the authoritative opinions of eminent men, not as the words of God himself^[48]. In this respect, it may be said that the Anugītā seems rather to belong to an earlier stratum of thought than even the Sanatsujātīya, in which a Jñānakāṇḍa, as forming a part of the Vedic canon, seems to be recognised^[49]. But it is abundantly clear, that the Anugītā stands, at a very considerable chronological distance from the Bhagavadgītā.

Such are the results of our investigation. We have not thought it necessary to discuss the verse or the language of the work. But it must in fairness be pointed out, that upon the whole, the verse and language are both pretty near the classical model. There are, it is true, a few instances of the metrical anomalies we have noticed elsewhere, but having regard to the extent of the work, those instances are far from being very numerous. The language and style, too, are not quite smooth and polished; though, judging from them alone, I should rather be inclined to place the Sanatsujātīya prior to the Anugītā. But that suggests a question which we cannot now stop to discuss.

One word, in conclusion, about the translation. The text used has been chiefly that adopted in the commentary of Arjuna Miśra, a commentary which on the whole I prefer very much to that of Nīlakaṇṭha, which has been printed in the Bombay edition of the Mahābhārata. Arjuna Miśra, as a rule, affords some explanation where explanation is wanted, and does not endeavour to suit his text to any foregone conclusion. His comments have been of the greatest possible help to me; and my only regret is that the only copy of his commentary which was available to me, and the use of which I owe to the kindness of my friend Professor Bhāṇḍārkar, was not as correct a one as could be desired. I have also looked into the Viṣamaślokī, a short work containing notes on difficult passages of the Mahābhārata. The MS. of it belonging to the Government Collection of MSS. deposited in Deccan College was lent me also by Professor Bhāṇḍārkar. The principles adopted in the translation and notes have been the same as those followed in the other pieces contained in this volume.

P. S. I take this opportunity of stating that it is not at all certain that Arjuna Miśra is the name of the author of the commentary which I have used. I find that in supposing Arjuna Miśra to be the author, I confounded that commentary, which does not mention its author's name, with the commentary on another section of the Mahābhārata which does give its author's name as Arjuna Miśra, and which is also among the MSS. purchased by Professor Bhāṇḍārkar for the Government of Bombay. (See with regard to these MSS. Professor Bhāṇḍārkar's recently published Report on the search for Sanskrit MSS. Of 7th July, 1880.)

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

In the beginning of his gloss on the Anugītā he says, that it proposes to explain difficult passages in the Anugītā, &c.--Anugātādishu. And at the outset of his gloss on the whole Parvan he says, that in the Anugītā we have a statement of the miseries of birth, &c. as a protest against worldly life; in the Brahma Gītā we have a recommendation of Prāṇāyāma, &c.; and in the Guruśiṣyasaṃvāda we have a eulogium on the perception of the self as distinct from Prakṛti or nature, and incidentally a protest against Pravṛtti or action.

[2]:

p. 21.

[3]:

Pp. 15, 21. The latter corresponds to Śaṅkara's quotation above referred to.

[4]:

See p. 206 note.

[5]:

P. 739, and cf. p. 176 with Viṣṇu XXX, 44 seq.

[6]:

See II, 120.

[7]:

See Preface, Sāṅkhya-sāra, p. 37.

[8]:

P. 234.

[9]:

In fact the Brāhmaṇa is not identified with the Supreme Being afterwards. But that fact has not much bearing on the question here.

[10]:

Cf. Wilson's Daśakumāracarita, Introd. p. 22.

[11]:

The third alternative, that a work independently written was afterwards bodily thrown into the Mahābhārata, is one which in the circumstances here seems to me improbable.

[12]: