Zend Avesta Part 01

SR No.: 007671
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: James Darmesteter
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1895
Total Pages: 2695
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 49 MB

Page 1871

16
BHAGAVADGITA.
more undeviating is such adhesion. I need not stay here to point out, how this view receives corroboration froin the rules given on this subject in the standard work of Pingala on the Khandas Sastra. I will only conclude this point by saying, that the argument from the versification of the Gità, so far as it goes, indicates its position as being prior to the classical literature, and nearly contemporaneous with the Upanishad literature.
We now proceed to investigate the last group of facts falling under the head of internal evidence, as mentioned above. And first as regards the attitude of the Gità towards the Vedas. If we examine all the passages in thc Gitá, in which reference is made to the Vedas, the aggregate result appears to be, that the author of the Gità does not throw the Vedas entirely overboard. He feels and expresses reverence for them, only that reverence is of a somewhat special character. He says in effect, that the precepts of the Vedas are suitable to a certain class of people, of a certain intellectual and spiritual status, so to say. So far their authority is unimpcached. But if the unwise sticklers for the authority of the Vedas claim any. thing more for them than this, then the author of the Gità holds them to be wrong. He contends, on the contrary, that acting upon the ordinances of the Vedas is an obstacle to the attainment of the summum bonum!. Compare this with the doctrine of the L'panishads. The coincidence appears to me to be most noteworthy. In one of his recent lectures, Professor Max Müller uses the following eloquent language regarding the Upanishads a: ‘Lastly come the Upanishads; and what is their object? To show the utter uselessness, nay, the mischievousness of all ritual performances (compare our Gità, pp. 47, 48, 84"); to condemn every sacrificial act which has for its motive a desire or hope of reward (comp. Gità, p. 119); to deny, is not the cxistence, at least the exceptional and exalted character
. - Compare the passages collected under the word Vedas in our Index. • Hibbert Lectures, p. 340 sey.
II, 42-45; IX, 20, 21. • XVII, 13.
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