________________
CHAPTER
TEXT ANALYSIS
140
We are now ready to enther our main theme of a chronological analysis of the Bhagavati I-XX, which is going to be conducted in six sections in this chapter. These six sections are each subdivided into parts and subparts as required, in which we will try to group together the texts sharing the same topic or problem so that it will make it easy to examine them closely. The Bhagavati includes some miscellaneous passages which do not quite fit in any of these topical groups. We are, however, for the sake of our convenience, placing these passages in any one of these groups which can absorb these miscellaneous topics.
141
It is incumbent upon us to bring to light all the relevant Bhagavati materials to determine the date of the relevant sutras. However, it is beyond this present attempt to introduce exhaustive contents of texts, to explain each and every related concept, or to elucidate the import of all relevant texts. We are here attempting to examine the contents of relevant materials in order to ascertain their dates.
142
The contents of some sutras may cover several subject fields. Where this is the case, we will choose one subject field from the sutras concerned to determine its date. And once its date is determined, we will not try to examine other subject fields contained in the same sutra unless this is absolutely necessary. Thus the materials gathered together under a certain topical heading in each section and part may not always demonstrate the total collection of the relevant materials in the Bhagavati 1-XX. Also X-sutras are excluded from our examination. Neither do we attempt to collect all the contents of a sutra or a sutra group. This limitation of our survey should be kept in mind.
143
As previously mentioned, the most serious limitation of the present task is that the criteria to stratify the Bhagavati into its chronological layers on the basis of the thought trends found in the other canonical texts in five stages are still on uncertain ground. At the present stage of progress of research, it is inevitable that many sutras will be wrongly dated, until this can be corrected in the future. Also it is very often difficult to assign a precise canonical stage to a sutra, and we are bound to suffer indeterminate modes of expression such as "probably" and "likely".
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