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30
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
posterior to Kalidos o cut of consideration and
Apaata mba Dharmasdtra is to be placed in the fourth or fifth oentury B.C.,51 the Gita must, according to Telang's line of argumentation, belong at least to the fifth century B.C.
The entire reasoning of Telang is critically examined by Böhtlingk in the beginning of his Bemerkungen and has been proved to be completely baseless. The proofs (offered) by Telang are in fact so weak that one might wonder how a man of his learning and acumen should not have recognized their superficiality, if there were not (indeed) & psychological influence to account for this. To Telang, as to every Hindu, --how muchsoever enlightened it is an article of faith to believe in so high an antiquity of the Bhag. And where such necessities are powerful criticism indeed comes to an end.
The task of assigning a date to the Gità has been recognized by every one [p. 58 ) who has earnestly tried to solve the problem, as being very difficult; and the difficulties grow (all the more) if the problem is presented twofold, viz., to determine as well the age of the original Glità as also of its revision. I am afraid that generally speaking, we shall succeed in arriving, not at any certainties, but only at probabilities in this matter.
If we first take into consideration the Gita in its present form, we might-in fixing ita lowest limit-leave out of consideration all the testimonies for its existence that are posterior to Kalidasa. Kalidasa is the oldest author who refers to the Gitâ and that he does 80 is firmly established by Telang (Introduction, p 29). Of the two confirmatory passages which Telang brings forward 52 the socond one particularly is convincing, viz., Kumarasambhava VI. 67, where Angiras såys to the Himalaya: sthâne tvam sthavaråtmånam Vishiņum Ahuh manishiņah. “Rightly do the wise call thee Vishņu in the shape of a mountain." The reference is here (as already pointed out by the commentator Mallinátha) unmistakably to Bhag. X. 25, both in form and in sense. To Kalidasa, therefore, who is to be carried back to the middle of the fifth century A. D., 58 the Gitâ was an authoritative work. We might therefore set down A.D. 400 circa as the lower limit of the Gita.
It is not, however, to be supposed that the present id first originated in a time that lies very near to this lower limit as fixed by us. The movision of the poem belongs to that period in the development of the Mahabharata text which Hopkins, Great Epic, 398, places between 200 B.C. to A.D. 100-200 (Remaking of the opio with Krishna as all-god, intrusion of masses of didactio matter, addition of Puranic material, old and new). As a matter of fact, however, the present Ata [. 59] could be mostly attributed to the second hall of this period. This follows from the fact that a considerable time must have elapsed before some one oould venture to subject the original Gita to a thorough revision and transformation. From the consideration, therefore, of the age of the genuine Gita which too I shall forthwith try to fix, the revision of the Cità could not have taken place earlier than the first or second century A. D.; and if I were to fix upon the second century (as the period of the revision), I would still be placing it somewhat earlier than is usually the CMHO ( to do ), and earlier than what John Davies, for instance, (The Bhag., 183,
# Soo Bublor's preface to his translation of this work, - SBE. XIV).
The first paaungo in to be read a Raghwania, X, 31 and not 67, as stated in Telang's work. # See the latest literature on the question by W. Klemm.-2DMG. 88, 200.
