The Bhagavadgîtâ, with the Sanatsugâtîya and the Anugîtâ — SBE Vol. 8 (trans. K. T. Telang, 1882)

The net result of this part of the investigation appears to be, that we have pretty strong grounds for holding the Anugita to belong to a period very considerably removed from the period. of the Upanishads and the Bhagavadgita ; but that we have no tangible grounds on which to base any deduction regarding its priority or otherwise to the Sankhya and Yoga systems of philosophy, or to the great movement of Gautama Buddha. There is only one other point, which we can establish in a not entirely unsatisfactory way, and which enables us to draw closer the limits within which the Anugita must have been composed. That point is the position of the Anugita with reference to Apastamba’s Dharma-sûtra. I need not say again, that I accept here the proposition about the age of Apastamba which has been laid down by Dr. Bühler, as a sufficiently satisfactory working hypothesis. And accepting that proposition, I venture to suggest the fourth century B.C. as a not unlikely date for the Anugîtâ. It appears to me, that a comparison of. the Anugita and the rules of Apastamba upon one important point which they both deal with shows the priority of the former work. I allude to the rules and regulations touching the four Asramas or orders contained in the Anugita and in‘the Dharma-sûtra of Apastamba. One circumstance strikes us at once on comparing the two works on this point. Apastamba goes into a very great deal of minute details more than the Anugîtâ, although the latter work does not deal with the topic in any very summary mode. Taking all the differences between the two works together, and the fact that the Anugita sets about the discussion of the topic in a manner which seems intended to be—not, indeed, absolutely exhaustive, but still—very full, I am very strongly inclined to attribute the differences to an actual development and progress of doctrine. I will endeavour to illustrate this view by means of a few detailed instances’. And let us first take the order of householders to which the Anugita gives precedence over the others. One of the injunctions laid down by the Anugita is that the householder should always be devoted to his wife. Against this simple precept, we have a very minute series of rules prescribed by Apastamba, which it is not necessary to refer to specifically, but which may be seen in several of the Sûtras contained in the first Khanda of the first Pazala of the second Prasna. Compare again the excessive minuteness of the rules regarding the Bali-offering or the reception of guests, as given by Apastamba, with the simple statement of the Anugita that the five great sacrifices should be performed. There again, I think, we are to see in this difference of treatment the result of a pretty long course of ceremonial progress. Proceeding to the rules regarding the Brahmakarin or student, an analogous phenomenon meets us there. Taking first the subject of food, we have a considerable the leave of his preceptor, eat his food without decrying it. Again with regard to alms, whereas the Anugita simply “ate SRE te ne says that the student should take his food out of the alms received by him, Apastamba has an elaborate catena of rules as to how the alms are to be collected, and from whom, and so forth. Take again the provisions in the two works regarding the description of the cloth, staff, and girdle of the student. Apastamba refers to various Opinions on this subject, of which there is not even a trace in the Anugita}. It appears that even before Apastamba’s time, distinctions had been laid down as to the description of girdle staff and cloth to be used by the different castes—distinctions of which there is no hint in the Anugita, where all students, of whatever caste, are spoken of under the generic name. These distinctions appear to me to point very strongly to that ceremonial and doctrinal progress of which we have spoken above. The tendency is visible in them to sever the Brâhmaṇas from the other castes—by external marks. And that tendency, it seems to me, must have set in, as the merits which had given the Brâhmaṇa caste its original position at the head of Hindu society were ceasing to be a living reality, and that caste was intrenching itself, so to say, more behind the worth and work of the early founders of its greatness, than the worth and work of their degenerating representatives. These comparisons, taken together, appear to me to warrant the proposition we have already laid down with regard to the priority of the Anugita to Apastamba. If we have not referred to the rules relating to the two other orders of forester and ascetic, it is because the scope for a comparison of those is very limited. Those rules alone would scarcely authorise the inference drawn above; but I can perceive nothing in them to countervail the effect of the comparisons already made. And it must be remembered, that the rules as to foresters and ascetics would be less apt to undergo change than those as to students and householders.