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 2061

206
ANUGËTA.
out that theory, but rendering interpolations possible, deserves to be noted. The scheme of the Anugità 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 Sânti Parvan of the Mahabharata and the Yogavasishtha exhibit a precisely similar framework of contents, and that the Pankatantra and the Kathasaritsagara, 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 Anugîtå 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 Anugitâ, 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 Anugita 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 Sankaråkarya's works, and one other which is referred to in the note below, suffice to show that the Anugîtå must have been some few centuries old in the time of Sankarâkârya. For whether we treat the Anugità as a part of the original Mahabharata or not, it is not likely that such a scholar as Sankara would have accepted the book as a genuine part of the Mahabharata, and as a work of Vyåsa, 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 substi
See Sankan, Sårtraka Bhashya, p. 776. That, however, may be a quotation from some other work. It may be noted that the passages quoted in the Bhishyn on Sanatsugitlya , so and I, 41 are not to be traced in our copies, though expressly stated there to bave been taken from the Anugfth
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