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INTRODUCTION.
213
this fact furnishes, I think, no sale ground for a chronological inference, more especially because, as pointed out by Dr. Bühler, the Buddhistic injunction is itself only borrowed from the Brahminical rules on the subject! It is impos. sible, therefore, to say that the Anugita borrowed its doctrine from Buddhism. It is, of course, equally impossible on the other hand to say, that Buddhism borrowed its rule from the Anugita. And, therefore, we can build ao safe inference upon this fact either. We have next the very remarkable passage at chapter XXXIV, where various contradictory and mutually exclusive views of piety are stated, or rather passingly and briefly indicated—a passage which one most devoutly wishes had been clearer than it is. In that passage I can find no reference to Buddhism. True it is that Nilakaxtha's commentary refers some of the doctrines there stated to Buddhistic schools. But that commentary, unsatisfactory enough in other places, is par. ticularly unsatisfactory here. And its critical accuracy may be judged from its reference to Saugatas and Yogakaras apparently as two distinct schools, whereas in truth the Saugatas are Buddhists, and Yogakaras one of the four principal Buddhist sects. And it must be further remembered, that the interpretations of Nilakantha, upon which his specifications of the different schools are based, are by no means such as necessarily claim acceptance. If then we do not find any reference to Buddhism in this passage, that fact becomes certainly a remarkable onc. Still, on the other hand, I am not prepared to apply the 'negative argument' here, and to say that inasmuch as Buddhism is not referred to where so many different opinions are referred to, Buddhism cannot have come into existence at the date of the Anugita. It seems to me that the argument will here be a very hazardous one, because if the author of the Anugita was, as we may assume he was, an orthodox Hindu, he might well have declined, although not unacquainted with Buddhism, to put into the mouths of the seven sages even as a possible view, that
See Gautama, pp. Iv and 191.
See also ibe gloss aa chap. XXXIV, 6.14
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