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INTRODUCTION.
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be said to have their ages fixed with even aay approach to accuracy. And in the case of the Sankhya-sätras, there is the further difficulty presented by the circumstance, that there is room for very serious doubts as to whether the current Satras are really of the authorship of Kapila, or whoever else was the original founder of the system. With regard to the Yoga, one or two observations from a different point of view may not, however, be entirely out of place. At p. 248 the Yoga Sastra is referred to eo nomine. What Sastra is here alluded to? Is it Patangali's, or some other Sastra dealing with similar topics ? Or, again, is it an entirely different matter that is alluded to, and are we not to see in the expression in question an allusion to any gys. tem formally propounded? I own, as stated in the note on the passage, that my mind inclines to the last view. There is not very much to say on either side of the question, as far as I am able to understand it. But the view I incline to appears to have one small circumstance in its favour. At p. 249 we have an allusion to persons who understand the Yoga, and to a certain illustration propounded by them. Now who are these persons? My limited knowledge of Yoga literature has not enabled me to trace the illustration anywhere else than in the Katkopanishad, and in the Sanatsugatiya. It seems to me very unlikely, that the illustration can have been put forward in any work older than the Katkopanishad. And we may, I think, assume it as most probable that the Sanatsugâtiya borrowed it from that work. If so, it is not likely that the Anugită can have referred to any other master of the Yoga than the author of the Kathopanishad. And then it would seem to follow, that the Anugitá must have been composed at a time when, although the l'panishads were looked on with reverence and as works of authority, they were not yet regarded as part and parcel of the Vedic revelation. It is impossible not to perceive, that the train of reasoning here is at every stage hedged round with difficulties and doubts. And the inference therefore to which we are led by it must be accepted with proportionate
• This seems to be also the implication of the passage at p. 309, where the nles for final emancipation are alluded to.
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