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 2081

226
ANUGITA.
dealt with may, perhaps, be also noticed here. We allude to the stanzas which we find in the Anugita and also in the Santi Parvan of the Mahabharata and in the Manusmriti. There is also one which the Anugîtà has in common with the Parisishta of Yaska's Nirukta”. 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 Gità, 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 Anugità 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 yiclded by it. We have endeavoured to express those conclusions in language which should not indicate any greater certainty attaching to them than can fairly be claimed for them. The net result appears to be this. The Anugità may be taken with historical certainty to have been some centuries old in the time of the great Sankaråkårya. It was very probably older than the Dharma-stras of Apastamba, 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 Upanishads ; probably removed by a distance of some centuries, during which 'stories' not contained in the Upanishads had not only obtained currency, but also come to be regarded as belonging to antiquity? And yet the period to
1 Cf. Anugitá I, 36 with Yåska ed. Roth), p. 190.
• Some of the Purátana Itihasas, e.g. that of Nárada and Devamata, are not traceable in any Vedic work known to us. Devamata's name I do not find referred to anywhere else.
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