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 2060

INTRODUCTION,
205
in an carly 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 Krishna, but of the Brahmana. 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. Again, in a passage still further on, we have the vocative O Parthal where the person addressed is not Arguna at all, but the Brahmana's wife. Now these lapses are susceptible of two explanations- either we are to see in them 80 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. I own, that on balancing the probabilities on the one side and the other, my mind rather Icans 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. And this the rather, that we find a similar slip towards the very beginning of the work, where we have the Brahmana Kasyapa addressed as Parantapa, or destroyer of foes-an cpithet which, I think, is exclusively reserved for Kshatriyas, and is, in any case, a very inap. propriate one to apply to a humble sceker for spiritual light. This slip appears to me to be incapable of explanation on any theory of interpolation. And hence the other slips above noted can hardly be regarded as supporting any such theory. Another circumstance, not indeed bearing
"lo fact the Brihman is not ideatified with the Supreme Being afterwards Dat that fact bas not much bearing on the question here.
· CL Wilson's Dunakumarahrita, Introd. p. 23.
• The third alternative, that a work independently written wus afterwards bodily thrown into the Mababhinats, is one which in the circumstances here sectas to me improbable.
• See also pp. 335. 289, 299.
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