A History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, so far as it illustrates the Primitive Religion of the Brahmans c8.s2.5

c8.s2.5

We remarked before, as a distinctive peculiarity of the style of Śaunaka, as contrasted with that of Kâtyâyana, that the Prâtiśâkhya ascribed to the former is composed in mixed Ślokas, whereas the Prâtiśâkhya of Kâtyâyana is written in prose or in Sûtras. The same observation applies to the Anukramaṇīs. Those ascribed to Śaunaka are composed in mixed metres, as far as we can judge from quotations; the Anukramaṇī of his pupil Kâtyâyana is in prose, and exhibits all the artificial appliances of a Sûtra composition. There is one of Śaunaka’s Anukramaṇīs, the Anuvâka-anukramaṇī, which can be restored completely from MSS.¹; and this work bears the most manifest traces of Śaunaka’s style, partly in the mixture, partly in a peculiar rudeness, of its metres. The other Anukramaṇīs ascribed to Śaunaka are lost to us, but they must have existed at the time of Shaḍguruśishya. He quotes not only from the Anuvâka-anukramaṇī (Bhâshya, viii. 1.), but also from the Deva-anukrama (Bhâshya, viii. 4.), and he distinguishes this work from the Bṛihaddevatâ, another work attributed to Śaunaka, of which there is one MS. in Europe at the Royal Library of Berlin.² Sâyaṇa also, though later than Shaḍguruśishya, was still in possession of Śaunaka’s works, and he quotes particularly the Bṛihaddevatâ, in several of his own commentaries. Śaunaka’s Ārsha-anukramaṇī is quoted by Sāyaṇa in his Commentary on the Rig-veda, i. 100. 1. If we add to these quotations a reference to Śaunaka’s Chhando-’nukramaṇī, which is found in Shaḍguruśishya’s Vedârthadīpikâ (MS. E.I.H. 1823, p. 7. a.), we may consider the authenticity of these works sufficiently established; and it is hardly unreasonable to suppose that the fifth Anukramaṇī also, of which no quotations have as yet been met with, the Sūktânukramaṇī, was in existence as late as Sāyaṇa’s time.¹