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V - THE DATE OF THE PRESENT GITĀ
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PART V-THE DATE OF THE PRESENT GĪTĀ.
I have proved above in a general way that the Bhagavadgitā is the most important work dealing with the Bhāgavata religion; that this Bhāgavata religion came into existence about 1400 years before Christ; and that the original Gītā must have come into existence some centuries after that; and I have also said that though the original Bhagavata religion favoured Desireless Action, it gradually assumed a Devotional form, and ultimately came to include the principles of Qualified-Monism (vrśıştādvaita). More information about the original Gītā or the original Bhāgavata religion is not available, at least at the present day; and the same was the case with the present Mahābhārata and the present Gitä about 50 years ago. But, as a result of the efforts of Dr. Bhandarkar, the late Mr. Kashinathpant Telang, the late Mr Shankar Balkrishna Dikshit, and Rao Bahadur Chintamanrao Vaidya, many proofs have now become available for fixing the date of the present Bhārata and the present Gītā; and very recently, the late Mr Tryambak Gurunath Kale has also adduced some more proofs. This part of the Appendix has been briefly made up by me by putting together all these matters and adding to them whatever addition was necessary in my opinion. In the beginning of this Appendix I have shown with proofs that the present Mahābhārata and the present Gitā must have been written by one and the same hand. When these two treatises are accepted as being written by the same hand, and therefore necessarily contemporaneous, one can easily fix the date of the Gītā by fixing the date of the Mahābhārata I have, therefore, in this part of the Appendix mentioned first the various important proofs which are now available for fixing the date of the present Mahābhārata, and then shown independently those proofs, which
ul for fixing the date of the present Gitā. I have followed this course in order that the fixing of the date of the Gitā should not suffer, if some one finds the proofs adduced by me for fixing the date of the Mahābhārata not sufficiently definite.
THE FIXING OF THE DATE OF THE MAHABHARATAThe Mahabharata is an extremely extensive work; and it is stated in that book itself, that it consists of one hundred
