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V-THE DATE OF THE PRESENT GITA 803
Astronomy, Itihasa (history), Nighantu (medicine) etc., and had converted them to his own religion. (See the description of Sela in the Sela-sutta out of the Sutta-nipata and Vaththugāthā 30-45). And just as ritualistic srauta sacrifices have been deprecated in the Katha and other Upanisads (Katha. 1. 18; Munda. 1. 2. 10), or in the Gită, consistently with those Upanisads (2 40-45; 9. 20 and 21), so also, and to a certain extent in the same words, has Buddha proved in the Tevijja-sutta (Traividya-Sutra), that "yajñas, yugas, etc. are useless and discardable"; and he has explained how that state, which is described by Brahmins as 'brahmasaharyatāya' (brahmasaharyatyaya brahma-suyuyatu) can, according to him, he attained From this it is clear, that the Buddhistic religion. has come into existence by bringing about an improvement in the two branches of the Brahmin religion, namely, the Karma-kända and Jñana-kanda-that is, the state of a householder and the state of an ascetic, or in other words, Activism (pravṛtti) and Renunciation (merth-after those two branches had become fully established. The ordinary rule of every reform is that some of the former matters remain and others change; and let us now consider, according to this rule, which things out of the Vedic religion remain in Buddhism and which have been given up. This question must be considered from the point of view of the state of the householder and of Asceticism. But as Buddhism was originally renunciatory or purely Inactivistic, we will first consider the aspect of Renunciation in both the religions, and then consider the state of the householder in both.
If one considers the Vedic Path of Renunciation, the principal element in it, will be seen to be the belief that all the activities in the world of Action are productive of Desire, that is to say, full of unhappiness; and that, in order to enable the Atman to permanently escape from it, that is, from the cycle of births and deaths, (i) the Mind has to be made desireless and renounced, and must be fixed on the eternal Parabrahman in the form of the Atman, which forms the foundation of the entire visible universe, and (ii) one has to totally abandon the duties. of family life and remain perpetually steeped in this Atmified state. Out of these, the visible world is defined by Name and
