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144
SANATSUGATIYA.
upanishad which speaks of returning to the path.' There, however, Sankara explains it to mean the path by which the self returns to worldly life,' namely, from space to the wind and so forth into vegetables, and food, ultimately appearing as a fætus. Another remarkable word is 'varga.' which occurs twice in the Sanatsugåtiya. Sankara and Nilakantha differ in their explanations of it, and Nilakantha indeed gives two different meanings to the word in the two passages where it occurs. We may also refer here specially to utsa, ritvig, and matva. In Boehtlingk and Roth's Lexicon the only passages cited under utsa' are from Vedic works, except two respectively from Susruta and the Dasakumarakarita. One passage, however, there cited, viz. Vishnoh pade parame madhva utsah, is plainly the original of the passage we are now considering. As to ritvig in the sense it bears here, we see, I think, what was the earlier signification of that word before it settled down into the somewhat technical meaning in which it is now familiar. And matva in the sense of meditating upon ' is to be found in the Upanishads, but not, I think, in any work of the classical literature. These words, therefore, seem to indicate that the Sanatsugåtîya was composed at a stage in the development of the Sanskrit language which is a good deal earlier than the stage which we see completely reached in the classical literature.
Coming now to the matter of the Sanatsugátiya, it appears to me, that we there see indications pointing in a general way to the same conclusion as that which we have here arrived at. There is, in the first place, a looseness and want of rigid system in the mode of handling the subject, similar to that which we have already observed upon as characterising the Bhagavadgitá. There is no obvious bond of connexion joining together the various subjects discussed, nor are those subjects themselves treated after any very scientific or rigorous method. Again, if the fourth chapter is a genuine part of the Sanatsugåtîya, we have an claborate repetition in one part, of what has been said in another part of the work, with only a few variations in words, and
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