Dhammapada

SR No.: 007674
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Max Muller
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1881
Total Pages: 2540
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 45 MB

Page 1736

xxii
VASISHTHA.
corruptions and grammatical mistakes, and that Vasishtha XXVIII, 18–22 has been borrowed from Vishnu LXXXVII. Professor Jolly's assertion regarding the second passage involves, however, a little mistake. For the first two Slokas, Vasishtha XXVIII, 18-19, describe not the gift of the skin of a black antelope, which is mentioned in the first six Satras of Vishnu LXXXVII, but the rite of feeding Brâhmans with honey and sesamum grains, which occurs Vishnu XC, 10. The three verses, Vasishtha XXVIII, 20-22, on the other hand, really are the same as those given by Vishnu LXXXVII, 8-10. It is, however, expressly stated in the Vishnusmriti that they contain a quotation, and are not the original composition of the author of the Dharma-sútra. Hence no inference can be drawn from the recurrence of the same stanzas in the Vâsishtha Dharma-stra. As regards the other passage, Vasishtha XXVIII, 10-15, Professor Jolly is quite right in saying that it is a clumsy versification of Vishnu's Sätras, and it is not at all improbable that Vasishtha's verses may have been immediately derived from the Kathaka. The further inference as to the priority of the ancient Kathaka-sůtra to Vasishtha, which Professor Jolly draws from the comparison of the two passages, would also be unimpeachable, if the genuineness of Vasishtha's twenty-eighth chapter were certain. But that is unfortunately not the case. Not only that chapter, but the preceding ones, XXV-XXVII, in fact the whole section on secret penances, are, in my opinion, not only suspicious, but certainly betray the hand of a later restorer and corrector. Everybody who carefully reads the Sanskrit text of the Dharma-sútra will be struck by the change of the style and the difference in the language which the four chapters on secret penances show, as compared with the preceding and following sections. Throughout the whole of the first twenty-four chapters and in the last two chapters we find a mixture of prose and verse. With one exception in the sixth chapter, where thirty-one verses form the beginning of the section on the rule of conduct, the author follows always one and the same plan in arranging his materials. His own rules are given first in the form of aphorisms, and after
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