Indian Antiquary Vol 24

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 41

TEBRUARY, 1895.)
BULLETIN OF THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA.
87
várttika, has been lost.21 He was, it is said, the first of the eight pandits who were the diggajas, " the elephants of the cardinal points," of the court of Vijayanagara, and seems to have been one of the most perfect specimens of those prodigies of the learning of the decadence, who went on ceaselessly re-casting the work of their predecessors, without adding an atom of their own. The literary profession has become hereditary in the family, and to the data given about him in the Sanskrit preface to the Siddhantalesa we may add that his grand-nephew Nilakanthadikshita, speaks of his great-uncle at the end of his Anyápadesa ataka (Kávyamálá, 1890).
The works just mentioned belong strictly to the Vedanta. The Jivanmuktiviseka82 of Vidyaranya, i.e., of Madhavacharya, in which the great commentator lays down the theory of " deliverance during this life," is more eclectic. Final deliverance takes places only after death ; but like all the Hindu systems, the Vedanta admits that the wise man may attain to a state which is equivalent to it during life. But it shews only by what means the wise man may arrive at it, and does not describe it. To gain materials for such a description, Madhava has had recourse to works which, strictly speaking, do not belong to the Vedanta, not only to the Bhagavadgitá and the Bhagavata Purána, but to the Yogavasishtha, and has borrowed from the Yoga his hypnotic practices and his theory of ecstasy. In spite of these borrowings and the directions how one must attain to this state, the treatise deals rather with the
temukshu than the mukta, with the aspirant rather than with him who has already entered into this condition. What Prof. Lanman and M. Oltramare24 bave written is rather on Hindu philosophy in general, than specially on the Vedanta, the first on the beginnings of Hindu pantheism, and the second on Hindoo pessimism, Professor Weber has given an analysis of two short compositions, the Ashļávakragitá and tbe Bhedábhedaváda of Vamsidasa, of which the former is the more ancient, but which seem both to belong to the Vedanta of tbe Purúnas.3 Professor Windisch, again, has collected from the literature and the traditions of the people the opinions held by the Hindus as to the seat of the soul, 26 which they placed, like many other peoples, not in the head but the breast, and has written a capital essay on a problem of physiology which has been much debated in the schools, and has left permanent traces; "the purusha, which is seated in the heart” of the Upanishads has never disappeared from philosophy.
The Mimárnka was to the ritual portion of the Veda what the Vedanta was to its speculative side ; it reduced it to a system intended to supply & solution of all dubious cases, by applying a kind of casuistry. To do this it had to work ont into a system several doctrines whích bad only at first a very remote connexion with the ritual; the theory of knowledge and dialectic, questions of authority, and castomary and social law, the reward of actions and the end of man, up to questions of pure metaphysics which the general tendency of the system is rather to exclude. The issue of the fundamental text, the Satras of Jaimini in the Bibliotheca Indica, has made no advance since my last Report.37 The text and index are complete, but the title of the second part, and a few words, at least by way of introduction on the method of forming the text and the manuscripts used by the editor, Pandit Maheschandra Nyâyaratna, are still wanting. These sutras are supplemented by the four books of the Sankarsha or Sankarshana Kánda, which Sabara Sva min does not appear to have commented, and which is begun in the Pandit with a commentary called Bhá!! adipika.
1 All that remains, the two first chapters, has been edited in the Pandit, XII. (1890), and in the Kapyamsis (1893).
31 Vlauders Sastrikarman, Srimad Vidyaranyak rito Jivanmuklivivekah, Poona, 1889, in the AnandAbrams Sanskrit Series.
Charles Rockwell Lanman, The Beginning of Hindu Pantheism : an Addrew delivered at the trendy-recond Annual Meeting of the American Philological Association, Cambridge, Man. U. 8. A. 1890. » Paul Oltramare, Le Pessimisme hindow, Genève, 1892 (from the Etrennes chrétiennes).
Albrecht Weber, Veber rivei Vedanta-tezte. Bitrungsberichte of the Academy of » E. Windisch, Ueber den Sitz der denkenden Seele, besonders bei den Indern and Griechen und eine Etymologie von Gr, sparider. Berichte of the Royal Saxon Academy, Leipzig, 1891.
Pandita Mahakachandra Nysyaratna, The Mimishoid Dariana, with the Commentary of Bayara darin, Part I.-IIX. Caloutta, 1870-1887.