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INTRODUCTION.
- -- - -- - -- stages of ancient Indian history, and that the stage to which the Gità belongs is the earliest, and that to which Åpastamba belongs, the latest of such stages.
I am unable to find anything else in the way of internal evidence bcaring upon the date of the Anugitá. It appears to me, that the date to which the investigation we have now gone through leads us, is one which, in the present state of our information, may be fairly accepted as a provisional hypothesis. It does not appear to me to conflict with any ascertained dates, while it is pointed to as probable by the various lines of testimony which we have here considered. We now proceed to discuss one or two other points which may have a bearing upon this topic, but which at present cannot yield us any positive guidance in our search for the date of the Anugita. And first among these, let us consider the various names of deities that occur in different parts of the work. We have, then, Vishnu, Sambhu, Gishru, Soma, Aditya, Surya, Mitra, Agni, Kandra, Rudra, Siva, Varuna, Pragapati, Maghavat, Purandara, Indra, Brahman, Satakratu, Dharma, Narayana, Vayu, Yama, Tvashtri, Hari, Isvara, and lastly Uma under three different names, namely, Uma, Mahesvari, and Pår. vatl. Now, leaving aside for the moment the three names of Uma, which appear from the passage where they are used to be all three the names of the same goddess, there is no doubt that in the list above set out, some of the names are merely used in different passages, but still to indicate the same being. Thus, Indra, Satakratu, Purandara, and Maghavat are really the sames of one and the same deity. But when Soma is mentioned as the deity presiding over the tongue, and K'andramas as the deity presiding over the mind, it becomes doubtful whether the two names do really indicate the same deity, albeit in later Sanskrit Soma and Kandramas both signify the moon. Similarly, when Arka is said to be the deity presiding over the eye, and Mitra over another organ, it seems open to question whether Arka and Mitra both signify the sun there, as they undoubtedly do in classical Sanskrit. True it is, that even in such a recent work as the Sankhya-sára, this mention
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