Indian Antiquary Vol 47

SR No.: 032539
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Richard Carnac Temple, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar
Publisher: Swati Publications
Publication Year: 1984
Total Pages: 386
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 15 MB

Page 364

14
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
contributed (Arjuna's) contrast with Krishna (in colour). It can scarcely be thought that Arjuna has been from the very first a real personal name. Cases of colour-epithets becoming individual names (of persons) have indeed been quite extra ordinarily common in India since very remote times. In addition to Krishna, Arjuna and Pardu, I might name Asita, Kapila, Chitra, Nili, Rama, Rohita, Lohita, Virûpa. Sukla, Syama, Syâmaka, Syâva, Syavaka, Sveta, Hari, Harita. If it therefore follows from this list-which could certainly be still enlarged-that every kind of colour has been utilized to serve as basis for (coining) personal names, I cannot still decide for the supposition that the friend and disciple of Krisha, might have borne as a child the name Arjuna ; since the play of chance that might have brought together two persons of the names Kțishna and Arjuna (black and white) would be indeed) too remarkable and therefore), improbable ; had it been "black" and "red" or "black" and "yellow," the probability would have been greater that there was such a person who bore the name from his infancy)..
The development of the Bhagavata religion, which, according to the usual view, dates from the medieval ages of India, but which, according to my opinion, as set forth above, commences much earlier, proceeded along two lines-vix, the speculative one and the deepening of the religious sentiment.
The genuine Indian disposition to combine Religion and Philosophy and the strong speculative tendency in particular of the Kshatriya caste, resulted in a philosophical basis being given to the Bhagavata religion, when an interest in philosophical questions had laid possession far and wide of all classes of society in ancient India. For this purpose were utilized the two oldest systems (of Philosophy) which India has produced, viz., Samkhya and Yoga.28 [p. 29) The way in which a philosophical basis was thus given to the Bhagavata religion can indeed be recognized quite distinctly in the Bhag., the proper devotional manual of that sect. Besides I might here as well refer to a conjecture which I have put forward in my Sainkhya Philosophie, p. 56. In place of "the old Vishou-ism with & Samkhya-metaphysics” which A. Barth, Religions de l'Inde p. 117 arrives at, because of the many traces of a 'dualistic theory of the Universe, to be found in Vishğu-ite works, we shall have probably to substitute simply “the religion of the Bhagavatas," which îndeed at a later period merges into Vishņu-ism, and to which the Bhagavata religion has transmitted its views.
R. G. Bhandarkar, Report, p. 74 (bottom) speaks of the “religion of Bhakti or Love and Faith that had existed from times immemorial.” So high an antiquity for the existence of) Bhakti-& trustful and confiding devotion to God-should not only have been asserted, but proved as well. So long as the latter is not the case it cannot really be held as probable that Bhakti has been the peculiar characteristic of the Bhagavata religion from the very beginning, although this conception has in later times supplied it and its offshoots with their most important characteristics. The question regarding the age and the origin of Bhakti is of such an importance for our (present) consideration that we must investigate it somewhat closely.
As the oldest evidence for the word Bhakti in the above-mentioned sense might be mentioned the concluding verse of the Sveta svatara Upanishad : "yasya deve para bhaktib" "he who has the highest devotion for God," and the use of this word has
Compare Lassen, I.A.K., II, p. 1123.