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ANUGÎTA.
good things to a focus. Arguna Misra is a very much more satisfactory commentator. But he is not likely to be a writer of a very remote date. I assume, that he must be more recent than Sarkaråkarya, though I cannot say that I have any very tenable ground for the assumption. But assuming that, I think it more satisfactory to adopt Sankarakarya's nomenclature, and to treat the thirty-six chapters here translated as constituting the Anugita. It is not improbable, if our assumption is correct, that the division of the thirty-six chapters in the manner we have seen may have come into vogue after the date of Vigñana Bhikshu, who, according to Dr. F. E. Hall, 'lived in all probability in the sixteenth or seventeenth century, and whom there is some slight reason for carrying back still further!!!
Do these thirty-six chapters, then, form one integral work? Are they all the work of one and the same author ? These are the questions which next present themselves for consideration. The evidence bearing upon them, however, is, as might be expected, excessively scanty. Of external evidence, indeed, we have really aone, barring Sankara's statement in his commentary on the Brihadaranyakaupanishad? that the verse which he there quotes from the Anugîtà has Vyasa for its author. That statement indicates that Sankara accepted the current tradition of Vyasa's authorship of the Anugitá; and such acceptance, presumably, followed from his acceptance of the tradition of Vyasa's authorship of the entire Mahabharata. If that tradition is incorrect, and Vyása is not the author of the Anugita, we have no means of ascertaining who is the author. And as to the tradition in question, it is difficult, in the present state of our materials, to form any satisfactory judgment. We therefore proceed at once to consider whether the Anugita is really one work. And I must admit at the outset that I find it difficult to answer this question. There are certainly some circumstances connected with the work which might be regarded as indicating a different authorship of different parts of it. Thus
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See Preface, Sankhya.san, p. 37.
· P. 334
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