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INTRODUCTION.
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this, namely, that we have many instances of passages common, almost verbatim et literatim, to the Mahabharata and other works. For onc instance, take the very passage on which a chronological argument has been founded by us in the Introduction to the Sanatsugátiya! It ought to have been there pointed out, that the stanza about a young man being bound to rise to receive an elderly person, occurs in the Manu Smriti* also in exactly the same words. The omission to note this circumstance in its proper place in the Introduction to the Sanatsugatiya was due to a mere inadvertence. But the conclusion there hinted at was expressed in very cautious language, and with many qualifications, out of regard to circumstances such as those which we are now considering. Similar repetitions may be pointed out in other places. The passage about the Kshetragia and Sattva and their mutual relations (see p. 374) occurs, as pointed out in the note there, in at least two other places in the Mahabharata. The passage likewise which occurs in Gita, p. 103, about the 'hands, feet, &c., on all sides,' is onc which may be seen, to my own knowledge, in about half a dozen places in the Mahabharata. Such cases, I believe, may be easily multiplied; and they illustrate and are illustrated by Mr. Freeman's proposition respecting the epic age in Greece, to which we have already alluded. It follows, consequently, that the quotations from Sankara and Vistana, to which we have referred above, do not militate very strongly against the final conclusion at which we have arrived. The testimony of the MSS. and the commentators is of considerably greater force. But Nilakantha, whatever his merits as an exegete-and even these are often marred by a persistent effort to read his own foregone conclusions into the text he comments on-Nilakantha is but an indifferent authority in the domain of historical criticism. In his commentary on the Sanatsugattya, for instance, he tells us that he has admitted into his text sundry verses which were not in the copy used by Sarkara, and for which he had none but a very modern voucher, and he very naively adds that he has done so on the principle of collecting all
P. 139, and ch p. 176 with Vishwu XXX, 44 xq. • See II, isa
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