CORRESPONDENCE, &c.

JULY, 1873.]

tom not to use the king's ancestral pedigree, but only that of his purohita (purohitapravarend 'brāh manasya, ibid. X. 79). To speak of his sacrifices in the way Patañjali does, appears thus as a most natural thing for any Brahmanic 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 the writer was contemporaneous with him. “There would result a very curious biography of Patañjali if all the examples which he draws from common life, and which are given by him in the first person, were to be considered as throwing light on his own personal experiences.” Both passages on the sacrifices of Pushpamitra are highly welcome

as a bit of history of that king, but with regard to Patañjali's age, 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

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quite impossible that he could have stood by his conclusions in spite of all I had brought forward with regard to their relation to Nāgārjuna, and Nå gārjuna's relation to Abhimanyu, and that they should not have been anyhow affected by them. Without the fresh light thrown upon the passage, in question, when interpreted according to Kern's view, that the Mādhyamikās are not the Bauddha sect, but a people in Middle India, its interpre tation would still remain beset by all those diffi culties, from which Bhāndārkar has now, to be sure, made a very good case against me, but which were 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 the double assumption that the reading midhyamvikºfs" is correct, and that the name of the school did not exist until

sages adduced by Goldstücker: “arumad Yavanah

after its foundation by Nāgārjuna.” 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 consider it as settled, and hold to the opinion that it “requires

Säketam,” and, “arumad Yavano Mādhyamikán.”

further elucidation.”

Only the first ºf them was noticed by Bhāndārkar

published in India, 1864, had remained to him as

I come now to the facts adduced by Bhāndār kar at pp. 69-71. The first of them—the third mention of Pushpamitra's name—I have already spoken of. In his remarks on Patañjali's native place he quotes a very remarkable passage from the Mahābhāshya, which no doubt refers to Sã k et a as lying between the place of the speaker and Pātaliputra. Sāketa, Bhāndārkar takes to be Ayodhyā, and proceeds : “Patañjali's native place therefore must have been somewhere to the north-west by west of Oudh.” Now there is a town and district of the name of G on d a , 20 miles to the north-west of it. Gonda represents a modern corruption of the Prakrit Gonadda, Sanskr. Gonarda, contained in G on a r di y a , a surname

unknown as my own lucubrations written in German in 1861. For so long as, with Goldstücker, he considered the Mādhyamikās to be the Bauddha school of that name, it appears to me

of the great grammarian. This conclusion, though very ingenious and clever indeed, seems to me still surrounded by very grave difficulties. First there

memory of this king was still cherished by the Brahmans.

We come now to the second point, the two pas

in his first article (Ind. 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 Goldstücker, would seem to show, on the con trary, that he acquiesced in it, not being yet aware of all the difficulties of the case.

When there

fore he now proclaims that the conclusions at which he arrived at that time are “not affected

by anything” I have said in my critique on Goldstücker, he is enabled to say so only from

my having meanwhile drawn his attention to Pro fessor Kern's opinion on the Mā dhyam i kās, which too, though contained in an English book

• Ind. Stud, W. 158, in the following note, left out in the

translation on p. 63,-‘‘When Goldstücker regards the example given in the Mahibhāshya, III. 2, 114 (which occurs also in I. 1, 44, Ballantyne, p. 538): 'abhijänäsi devadatta Ka Ś m i re shu vatsyāmah, tatra saktún på

syāmah (odanam bhokshyāmahe, p. 538), Ka 3 m i r * h agachhāma, tatra saktún apibáma (odanam abhuſ.jmahi, p. 538), as ‘information’ which Patañjali has given us

• 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 Patañjali, or how such a journey as his into

Kashmir, for the purpose of there drinking saktún (beer yavapishtāni, Taitt, S., ed. Roer, I. p. 627), or of eating odana

(pº-vaso

lakshanam bhojanam lakshyam, says

of Patañjali. G on d a therefore is the native place

the Calcutta Scholiast,-can have exercised any possible influence on the interest which Abhimanyu and, 600 years later, Jayápida showed in the Mahibhºshya. It could not indeed be inferred from this example, with any kind of certainty, that Patañjali did not himself live in Kashmir. In fact, quite a curious biography of Patañjali might be constructed, if all his examples of this nature, taken from common life, which are expressed in the first person, were

to be regarded at the 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 he says it is a mere supposition, not supported by any reliable autho rity, “that Kanishka persecuted the Buddhists before he him self became a convert;” this is no “supposition” of mine at

all, as he calls it still another time, since I quote for it (p. 62) the testimony of Hiwen Thsang, I. 107 (Lassen, III. 857).