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NOVEMBER, 1928)
KATHAKA UPANISAD
207
By making this short comparison between the Taittiriya Brahmana passage and the Upanigad we can, I think, see how the later one has originally been built up.
The Kafhaka is counted by Deussen and others as belonging to the second period of the greater Upanişads which, however, tells us nothing about the time of its origin. Oldenberg long ago 6o found that metrically it is pre-Buddhist; and Professor Stcherbatsky recently61 seems to take this quite for granted. However, to say that its metre is “pre-Buddhist " can only mean that it is in general more ancient-looking than the metres occurring in the oldest Buddhist texte, as e.g., the Sutta-Nipata and others. But of their age we know nothing-only that they did probably exist at the time of Asoka (c. 250 B.C.). To me it appears that the surroundings are entirely the same that we meet with in the old Buddhism. The question put to Yama in verse 1, 20 is exactly the same as that repeatedly put to the Buddha, viz., "does the Tathagata survive after death, or does he not survive ?" In 5, 11-12 duhkha and sukha seem to have the same sense of unrest' and 'rest' that they have in Buddhist philosophy, as proved by Professor Stcherbatsky; sdnti is just as well Buddhist as Upani. sadio, eto. It thus seems probable that our text belongs to about the same time as the oldest Buddhist texts-perhaps the fourth century B.C.--and that it originated in the same spiritual surroundings as did those works.
Oldenberg onceby pointed to the great similarity between the soene where Yama tries to evade the third question of Naciketas by offering him land, wealth, cattle, women and sexual pleasures, and the well-known one where Måra tries to divert the Bodhisattva from his designs on Buddhahood by tempting him with all the goods and pleasures of this worldamongst others with his three lovely daughters. There is not the slightest doubt that these scenes are closely connected with each other. But at the bottom of them both is the old Indian idea of the holy man who is becoming a danger to the gods, and whose holiness they try to destroy by appealing to his carnal desires.63
Naciketas, the Brahman boy who overcomes the resistance of Death, is the male counterpart of the divine Savitri, who by her wise words induces Yama to release the soul of her dead husband Satyavan and give him back to life. Nothing better can be said for him than this, that in him and Savitri Sanskrit literature has perhaps created its most sublime figures.
With these perfunctory remarks I turn to the text itself. It need scarcely be pointed out that I do not lay claim to any very startling discoveries. I venture to think that in a few passages I have perhaps succeeded a little better than previous interpreters-that is all.
(To he continued.)
80 ZDMG., xl, p. 87 sq. 81 Central Conception of Buddhism, p. 68. 62 Cf. Buddha, 5th ed., p. 60 sq.
53 The Apearases such as Menak, Urvasi, etc., are well known as being the tools of the gods in those unsavoury endeavours of theirs.
