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INTRODUCTION,
cxi
texts can have any doubt who the borrower is, as the Purâna regularly substitutes easy readings for difficult ones, and adds numerous explanatory verses. Besides, Narayana, as well as Kullûka', quotes verses of the Bhavishya-purâna from a section on penances not found in the accessible MSS., which likewise are clearly intended to explain the text of our Samhita. All this is however useless, as for the present it is impossible to determine the date of the Purâna even approximatively. Professor H. H. Wilson', who has a very mean opinion of the book, declares that it cannot lay claim to a high antiquity, and seems to consider it a production of the ninth or tenth century A.D. Professor Aufrecht's discoverys that the Matsya-purana, which mentions a Bhavishya-purana in 14,500 verses, contains actually several sections which have been borrowed from the portions of the latter work preserved in the MSS., makes Professor Wilson's estimate improbable. For the Matsya-purâna was considered a canonical work about the year 1000 A. D., and used by Albîrûnî for his work on India4. Though it, therefore, becomes probable that the Bhavishya-purana is much older than Professor Wilson was inclined to assume, the data thus gained are much too vague for inferences regarding the age of our Manu-smriti.
Equally unsatisfactory are the results which an examination of the quotations from the Manu-smriti, found in various Sanskrit works, yields us. Perfectly indisputable quotations are not very common, and they occur mostly in works of comparatively recent date, e. g. in the Yasastilaka of the Digambara-Gaina poet Somadeva, 959 A. D.", in Sankaråkarya's Sârîrakabhåshya, 804 A. D.', and in Kshî.
See e. g. his remarks on Mano XI, 101, and Narayana's on XI, 131. • Vishnu.parâna, vol. i, pp. lxii-lxiv, and Reinaud, Mémoire sur l'Inde, P. 396.
* Catalogue, p. 43 * I owe the knowledge of this fact also to the kindness of Professor Sachau.
See Professor Peterson's Report on the Search for Sanskrit MSS., 1883-84, Pp. 42-43.
Deussen, Vedanta, p. 36. With respect to the date of Sankaråkarya's work, I follow the Hindu tradition, which places the birth of the author in 788 A. D. According to the statement of the late Yagttesvara Sastri, with whom I discussed the passages which he adduces in the Åryavidyasudhákara, p. 226, the sampra
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