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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
may well be uttered in the heat of oral controversy by one who, if he wrote in cold blood and without having before him a living opponent to vanquish, might preserve a thoroughly judicial calmness; and that there is, therefore, no necessary incompatibility between the account of the Sankaravijaya and what may be fairly inferred from Sankara's works. But this, though correct as far as it goes, does not seem to me to afford an adequate explanation. According to the Sankaravijaya, the objectionable language of which we have given specimens was all but habitual with Sankara. And it must be remembered also that where one feels earnestly, and more especially when one writes in the style in which our philosophical works are written, the imaginary opponent is not much less provoking than the real living one.
From all this it seems to me to follow that the portrait of Sankara presented to our view in the Sankaravijaya cannot have been drawn by one who knew well the author of the Bháshya on the Brahmasutras.. The work, therefore, cannot have been composed by a pupil of Sankara, consequently not by Anandagiri. It may, perhaps, be urged against this, that the portrait may have been drawn by a pupil unable to rise to his master's level, and incapable of understanding the master's true spirit. But such a misunderstanding does not, to my mind, furnish a sufficient explanation of all the facts. It seems to me, rather, that we should attribute the portrait to a writer living some considerable time after Sankara-about that time, probably, when his true personality having been in part forgotten, and fictions and legends having gathered round his name, such a thing as the per
[OCTOBER, 1876.
secution of the Buddhists, for instance, came to be ascribed to him.||
We may now proceed to apply to this work another and, to some extent, more satisfactory test. Let us examine some of the quotations we find in the Sankaravijaya. Now, in the first place, we have here quotations from the Skanda Purána, the Márkandeya Purána, the Brihan: náradiya Purána, the Vishnu Purana, and the Bháguvata Purána, T besides some stanzas which: are introduced with general expressions like "It is said in the Puranas," &c.* On Professor Wilson's view about the dates of the Puranas in general, and of the above-mentioned Puranas in particular, it clearly follows that his position: as regards the Sankaravijaya is quite untenable. For we find that the dates which he assigns to these Puranas range between the ninth and seventeenth centuries.† From this it necessarily follows that the work which quotes from those Purûnas cannot be placed earlier than the seventeenth century, cannot, therefore, be "the composition of a period not far removed from that at which" Anandagiri the pupil of Sankaracharya "may be supposed to have flourished," and cannot be "a safe guide in our inquiries into the actual state of the Hindu religion about eight or nine centuries ago." These conclusions, however, depend, of course, on the correctness of Professor Wilson's view about the dates of the Puranas in question. From that view I have already ventured to express my dissent, and I must take leave to do so again. I am not satisfied with the reasons assigned by Professor Wilson for his view, and I have pointed out some facts which appear to me to militate against it.§ Although, therefore,
Compare on this point Professor Wilson's Essays on Sanskrit Literature, vol. I. p. 24 and vol. III. p. 19. I am very strongly inclined to agree with Prof. Wilson and Raja Rammohan Rai in disbelieving the story of Sankara's persecution of the Buddhists. I have personally very little doubt that a great deal has been in these days fathered upon Sankara for which he really is not answerable.
See pp. 39, 41, 46, 71, 112, 182, 254.
p. 58. And see also pp. 73, 158, 218.
† See Preface to Vishnu Purana, passim. The Morkandeya, according to the Professor, belongs probably to the ninth, and the Brihannaradiya to the seventeenth century. Prof. Aufrecht (Catalogus 2526) says, "Atque eos libros omnes, quos Sankara laudans fingitur, tunc jam scriptos esse nobis persuadebimus, ne Bhagavata quidem, quo Vishnubhakta celebrantur, Sivagita, Rudrayâmala exceptis ?" But the dates of these works I take to be still unsettled, and I do not think, therefore, that any such argument can be based upon the mention of them as Professor Aufrecht imagines. I have, consequently, not noticed them in the text. For a similar reason I have not referred to the quo
tations from the Suryasiddhanta (see pp. 216-7, 132) which we can trace in the current recension of that work. As to the date of the Siddhanta see As. Researches, vol. VI. p. 572; vol. VIII. p. 206; Colebrooke's Essays (1st ed.), vol. II. pp. 327, 349, 383, 388. Colebrooke's remarks on the subject are, as usual, sober and cautious. I may state, as to the quotations above referred to from the Puranas, that I have not cared to look them up in the works to which they are attributed, as it is unnecessary for my present purpose to do so. With regard to the quotation from the Vishnu Purana which is not mentioned by Professor Aufrecht, see a subsequent note.
I See Introduction to Bhartrihari's Satakas (Bombay Sansk. Class.), pp. vii., viii., and also Introductory Essay to my translation of the Bhagavadgita, p. 30 and note. And compare also Babu RajendralAl Mitra's Notices of Sanskrit MSS., passim, especially No. IX.
§ Prof. Wilson's argument is based, to some extent, on a notion prevalent among European scholars, namely, that many of the principal dogmas of the present religion of the Hindus are of very late growth, such, for instance, as the
