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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
the interpolated passages are not for the most part even now recognisable as such in the new work. Though the interpolations are distributed very unequally on the eighteen Adhyâyas, it can well be supposed that the original Gita must have consisted of a smaller number of Adhyâyas. Its division into eighteen Adhyâyas is presumably fashioned after that of the Mahabharata into eighteen parvans ; perhaps the eighteen Parâņas were also known at that time.
The passages expurgated by me are, as already said, mainly of a Vedantic and Mimâísic import. Other passages are also expunged on other critical grounds, the reasons of which are set forth in the Appendix. One hundred and seventy out of the seven hundred verses of the Bhag. fall away in this way; if the twenty-four verses at the beginning and at the end which might or might not belong to the original Gita, are to be deducted from this number, there are one hundred and forty-six of these interpolated verses), or more than one-fifth of the whole.
I do not cherish the illusion that according to the method outlined above I might have succeeded in taking out all the unoriginal parts of the Bhag. At the time of the revision there mighthave been added many other verges besides, of which no word might have been existing in the original poem; means are, however, wanting to decide them as unoriginal, and I should not venture upon pure guess. W. von. Humboldt's remarks on p. 46 of his work make it appear that this great scholar was inclined to make the genuine Gita (Text p. 18] end with the eleventh Adhyâya. Hopkins, Great Epic, 225, calls the verses of Müh. VI. 830-1382, i.e. just the first fourteen Adhyâyas of our poem, "the heart of the Cita.” 17 I admit unhesitatingly that the later Adhyâyas contrast unfavorably with the preceding ones; I would not however, therefore, venture to declare them to be outright later additions, but would suppose that, as it so often happens, the skill of the composer has failed him as he approached the end. That many of the fundamental teachings of the Gita are for the first time brought into clear light in passages of the eighteenth Adhyâya (vv. 55, 66) speaks for the genuineness of the later Adhyâyas.
My translation of the Bhag. will in a convenient manner 'enable the reader to pass lightly over what I regard its un-genuine passages, and thus to secure a faithful representation of the original form of the Bhag.). In any case, my attempt at reconstructing (the original Bhag.) removes all the most glaring contradictions that pervade the whole poem in its present form, creating ambiguity and vagueness. It represents a Citâ the religious character of which is purely theistic, and the philosophical character of which closely corresponde to the doctrines of the Sårkhya-Yoga. Clear though the result of my investigation appears to me personally, I still expect to meet with opposition (from others). This opposition is principally to be expected from the side which regards the Samkhya as nothing else than a "muddling up" of Vedanta, though this standpoint in itself does not necessitate the rejection of the result I have arrived at.
17 When however Hopkins, p. 234, says that the heart of the poem differs in style from its beginning and ending, he does not indeed regard in this passage the beginning of the Gue as belonging to the "heart." How is this to agree with his statement above ?
