Page:The Indian Antiquary Vol 2.djvu/231

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July, 1873.] CORRESPONDENCE, &c. 207 tom not to use the king’s ancestral pedigree, but only that of his purohita {piirohitapravarend ’brdh• manasya, ibid. X. 79). To speak of his sacrifices in the way Patafijali does, appears thus as a most natural thing for any Brab manic writer who lived at a time when their fame was still fresh enough to be thankfully remembered, but seems to me far from implying with any strictness that tho writer was contemporaneous with him. “ There would result a very curious biography of Patafijali if all the examples which he draws from common life, and which are given by him in the first person, were to bo considered as throwing light on his own personal experiences.”* Both passages on tho sacrifices of Pushpamitra are highly welcome as a bit of history of that king, but with regard to Patafijali’s ago, in my opinion, they add nothing more to the fact, already known previously (since 1861), that he did not live before Pushpamitra’s time, but that they convey the notion that the memory of this king was still cherished by the Brahmans. We come now to tho second point, the two pas¬ sages adduced by Goidstucker: “ arunad Yavanah S&ketam,” and, “ arunad Yavano Madhyamik&n.” Only the first of them was noticed by Bhandarkar in his first article {Lid. Ant. I. p. 302); but his silence on the second, far from implying that he did not coincide with the interpretation of it given by Goidstucker, would seem to show, on tho con¬ trary, that he acquiesced in it, not being yet aware of all the difficulties of the case. When there¬ fore ho now proclaims that the conclusions at which ho arrived at that timo aro “ not affected by anything” I have said in my critique on Goidstucker, ho is enabled to say so only from my having meanwhilo drawn his attention to Pro¬ fessor Kern’s opinion oil the M&dhyamikas, which too, though contained iu an English book published in India, 1861, had remained to him as unknown as my own lucubrations written in German in 1861. For so long as, with Goidstucker, ho considered the Madhyamikas to bo the Bauddha school of that name, it appears to me • Ind. Stud. V. 158, in tho following note, left out in tho translation on p, 63,—’* When Goldstfickor regards the example given in the MahAbhdshya, III. 2, 114 (which occurs also in I. 1, 44, Ballantyne, p. 538): ‘ abhijAmisi devadatta Kasmtreshu vatsyAman, tatra saktdn pA- syAmah (odanam bhokshyfimahe, p. 538), KasmtrAn agachhAma, tatra saktfin apib&ina (odanam abhufijmahi, p. 538)’ as ‘ information * which Patafijali has given ns ‘of his having temporarily resided in Kashmir,’ and adds :— ‘ This circumstance throws some light on the interest which certain kings of this country took in the preserva¬ tion of the Great Commentary,’—I do not understand either how so perfectly general an example can determine any conclusion whatever regarding events in the personal history of Patafijali, or how such a journey as his into Kashmir, for the purpose of there drinking saktfin {beer ? yavapishtani, Taitt. 8., ed. Roer, I. p. 627), or of eating odana (pap)—vaso lakshanaih bhojanam lakshyain, says quito impossible that he could havo stood by his conclusions in spite of all I had brought forward with regard to their relation to N&g&rjuna, and N&- g&rjuna’s relation to Abhimanyu, aud that they should not havo been anyhow affected by them. Without the fresh light thrown upon tho passage, in question, when interpreted according to Kern’s view, that the Madhyamik&s are not tho Bauddha sect, but a people in Middlo India, its interpre¬ tation would still remain beset by all those diffi¬ culties, from which Bhand&rkar has now, to be sure, made a very good case against me, but which wore almost all of them already pointed out by my¬ self too, stating at the same time that, as I readily acknowledged, my rather forced attempts to explain them away rested “ on tho doublo assumption that the reading mddliyamikds' is correct, and that tho name of the school did not exist until after its foundation by Nag&rjuna.” There was no other explanation at hand at the time when I wrote. By Kern’s interpretation, the as¬ pect of the whole question is indeed very much changed, though I still hesitate to considor it as settled, and hold to the opinion that it “ requires further elucidation.” I come now to the facts adduced by Bh&ndar- kar at pp. 69-71. The first of them—tho third mention of Pushpamitra’s name—I have already spoken of. In his remarks on Patanjali’s native place ho quotes a very remarkable passage from tho Mahdbhdshya, which no doubt refers to Saketa as lying between tho placo of the speaker and Pataliputra. Saketa, Bhandarkar takes to be Ayodhya, £md- procoods : “ Patafijali’s native place therefore must have been somewhore to the north-west by west of Oudh.” Now there is a town and district of the namo of G o n d a, 20 miles to the north-west of it. Gonda represents a modern corruption of the Prakrit Gonadda, Sanskr. Gonarda, contained in Gonardiya, a surname of Patanjali. Gonda therefore is the native place of tho great grammarian. This conclusion, though very ingenious and clever indeed, seems to me still surrounded by very grave difficulties. First there the Calcutta Scholiast,—can havo exercised any possible influence on tho interest which Abhimanyu and,*600 years later, Jayaptla showed in tho Mahdbhfahya. It could not indeed be inferred from this example, with any kind of certainty, that Patafijali did not himself live in Kashmir. In fact, quite a curious biography of Patanjali might be constructed, if aU his examples of this nature, taken from common life, which aro expressed in tho jirst person, were to be regarded at tho same time in the light of personal experiences. The name Devadatta, corresponding to the Roman Caius, sufficiently testifies to the perfectly general character of the above example.” + In one point, however, he overstates them, when ho says it is a mere supposition, not supported by any reliable autho¬ rity, “ that Kanishka persecuted the Buddhists before he him¬ self became a convertthis is no “ supposition” of mine at all, as he calls it still another time, since I qnote for it (p. 62) the testimony of Hiwen Thsang, 1.107 (Lassen, III. 857).