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185 served through mere memorizing. The sütras or aphorisms of which they consist are extremely laconic in form, and are hardly intelligible without explanation. They were originally handed down by word of mouth from teacher to pupil together with their authoritative explanations and were reduced to writing much later. The explanations, which in the course of time had become more or less divergent, were also reduced to shape then and committed to writing under the name generally of bhāşyas or commentaries written in the common or vernacular tongue (ie. Sanskrit, not Vedic). This species of aphoristic literature continued to be produced long after the need for it had ceased, and some, if not all, of the philosophical Sūtras, as distinguished from the earlier ones like the Kalpa-sūtras (p. 88), are to be ascribed to this later stage. They are generally assigned to the period between 200 and 500 A.D. But it is essential to remember that it does not imply that the schools of thought, whose doctrines they expound, are themselves so late. They are undoubtedly considerably older and their high antiquity is indicated by the term rşi or 'ancient seer' applied to their first exponents like Gautama and Kapila. The dates given above should, therefore, be taken as only indicating the period of their reduction to a definite form. Thus, though representing in one sense the starting point of the darsanas, the Sūtras in reality presuppose a long course of development the details of which are lost to us, perhaps for ever. While they do not, therefore, correctly represent the real antiquity of the systems, they at the same time have received emendations at the hands of teachers and commentators since their first formulation. But there is no means now of determining exactly what parts are really original and what later modifications. The new is so inextricably blended with the old. The aim of the Sūtras may be described as two-fold to establish the particular doctrine which they inculcate and to refute all others which are at variance with it. They are thus critical as well as constructive. The literature of a school consists, in addition to the Sūtra, of one or more commentaries upon it with works explaining
Dates of Philosophical Sūtras, by Prof. Jacobi.-JAOS. xxxi. (1911).
