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DECEMBER, 1894.]
BULLETIN OF THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA.
357
The author has divided his essay into twelve questions, which taken together with their answers make as many chapters. 1. What is the Nirukta? - By Nirukta, properly "explanation of the meaning of words," we must understand here the second part of a book, whose first part is a dictionary, called Nighantu. The Nirukta is the commentary to the Nighantu. 2. To which of these two parts does the appellation Vedánga belong? To the Nirukta and to the Nirukta alone. The Nighantu is of a still higher authority, and is inferior only to the Mantras and equal to the Brahmanas, from which it differs only in the way it has been handed down to us. 3. Who is the author of the book? The Nighantu is contained in its entirety in the Brahmanas, so to say in a state of diffusion. Like them, it cannot be assigned to a definite author, and if we must name some author, we must go up as far as the prajapati Kasyapa. As to the Nirukta, is it the work of Yâska ? 4. Who was this Yaska? We have no direct evidence as to his personality; he tells us nothing of his name or family. Tradition alone informs us that he was of the gotra of Yâska, a Pâraskara, that is to say, a native of Pâraskara or a descendant of a Paraskara, probably also a descendant of another Yâska named in the Satapatha Brahmana and a follower of the Yajurveda. 5. Was Yâska a rishi, or inspired author? He was not a rishi in the first degree, like those who "saw" (revealed) the Mantras. Further he was not a rishi in the second degree, like those who pablished the Brahmaņas. He was not even a rishi in the third degree, like the authors of the Vedangas, to whom that title is also given; because his book, though rightly regarded as a Vedanga, is not one of the primitive Vedangas, such as the Grammar of Pânini;20 for they are enumerated in it as being six in all, the Nirukta itself included. It is therefore only by an extension of the term that we can give to Yaska the title rishi; properly speaking he was a muni, and áchárya, a sage or teacher. 6. What portion of the Nirukta goes back to Yâska ?- The first twelve books; the two last books are Parisishtas, or later additions. At the time of Sayana the fourteenth book had not been finally incorporated with the work; at the time of Devaraja, the oldest commentator known, the uncertainty extended to the thirteenth book; at Patanjali's time these two books were not yet in existence. 7. What is the date of Yâska? Unfortunately there are no historical works in India, and it is hardly likely that there ever were any. There are many stories in the Veda, but they are only allusions, examples, comparisons brought in without any connexion, sometimes simply allegories. No intelligent man will look on the Mahabharata as historical, still less the Puranas and Upapuranas. It will not do to use, for the ancient period, the commentators, like Shadgurusishya, for example, who has no notion of the gross historical anachronism he commits by confounding the rishi Saunaka of the Rigveda with the Saunaka, who had to do with the transmission of the Mahábhárata and the Harivansa.
One work, and one only, the Rájatarangin, can afford any satisfaction to those who are desirous of learning the truth about ancient India, but unfortunately it deals only with the kings of Kasmir. As to the other works whose supposed authority has been appealed to so rashly, such as the Kathúsaritságara, and its prototype, the Brihatkatha of Gunâdhya, in which Katyayana, though later than Pânini by a thousand years, is yet reckoned as his contemporary, they are a mere tissue of imposture. Books like these deserve no better fate than to be thrown into the fire, now that they have unfortunately escaped the destiny that was properly theirs, suppression at the moment of their origin. Under these conditions, all researches of this kind must be very difficult and uncertain. We must take indirect and unconnected pieces of evidence, bring them face to face with one another, join them together, and proceed, as it were, by feeling our way, at the risk of stumbling at every step. With this method, and with all these reserves before our mind, the following account seems most
20 The Grammar of Panini, newly edited and translated by Geheimrath von Böhtlingk, Leipzig, 1886-7, is at present being translated in India: The Ashtadhyay of Panini, translated into English by Srisa Chandra Vasu (Book I.), Allahabad, Indian Press, 1891. The translator gives most of the varttikas and adds the Kisika vritti. Another English translation by Mr. Goonetilleke (I have only seen the first part) does not seem to have been continued. On Panini and his system, see Bruno Liebich, Panini Ein Beitrag Zur Kenntniss der indischen Literatur und Grammatik, Leipzig, 1891.
