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INTRODUCTION.
207
tuted in his place Vyasa, who lived at the junction of the Dvâpara and Kali ages?, upwards of thirty centuries before the Christian era. The calculation is avowedly a very rough one, but I think we may, as the result of it, safely fix the third century of the Christian era as the latest date at which the Anugită can have been composed. Let us now endeavour to find out whether we can fix the date as lying within any better defined period. It is scarcely necdful to say, that the Anugita dates from a period considerably subsequent to the age of the Upani. shads. The passages relating to the Pranasamvada and so forth, which occur originally in the Upanishads, are referred to in the Anugità as 'ancient stories'-an indication that the Upanishads had already come to be esteemed as ancient compositions at the date of the latter work. It is not necessary, therefore, to go through an elaborate examination of the versions of the ancient stories alluded to above, as contained in the Upanishads and in the Anugita, more especially because it is possible for us to show that the Anugita is later than the Bhagavadgita, which latter work, as we have sccn, is later than the Upa. nishads. And to this point we shall now address ourselves. We have already observed upon the story referred to at the opening of this Introduction, which, historically interpreted, indicates the priority of the Bhagavadgitá to the Anugita. This conclusion is confirmed by sundry other circumstances, which we must now discuss in some detail, as they are also of use in helping to fix the position of the work in the history of Sanskrit literature and philosophy. First, then, it seems to me, that the state of society mirrored in the Aougita indicates a greater advance in social evolution than we have already seco is disclosed in the Bhagavadgita. Not to mention decorations of houses and so forth, which are alluded to in one passage of the Anugita, we are here told of royal oppressions, of losses of wealth accumulated with great difficulty, and of fierce captivities; we are told, to adapt the language of a modern English poet, of laws grinding the wcak, for strong men rule the
CL Sertraka Bhashy, p. 913.
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