A History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, so far as it illustrates the Primitive Religion of the Brahmans c8.s3.162

c8.s3.162

At first sight this might seem a very definite statement as to the age of Kâtyâyana, placing him, if we accept the conventional date of Buddha’s death, about 243 B. C. But how can we prove that Hiouen-thsang was speaking of Kâtyâyana Vararuchi? It might be said that the Kâtyâyana, so simply mentioned by Hiouen-thsang, must be a person of note. Hiouen-thsang does not mention ancient authors except men of note, and the Kâtyâyana whose dates he gives in this place, cannot be a chance person of that name, but must be some well-known author.¹ It could hardly be meant for Mahâkâtyâyana, because he was the pupil of Buddha, and could not be placed 300 years after his Nirvâna. Besides Mahâkâtyâyana, there is certainly no person of the same name of greater literary fame than Kâtyâyana Vararuchi. But the Kâtyâyana of whom Hiouen-thsang speaks was a Buddhist, and the author of a work on metaphysics, which Hiouen-thsang himself translated from Sanskrit into Chinese. Making all possible allowance for the tendency of later Buddhist writers to refer the authorship of certain works to names famous in ancient Brahmanic history, we can hardly build much on the supposition that the author meant by the Chinese traveller was the old Kâtyâyana Vararuchi, the contemporary of Pânini. But, even if all these objections could be removed, what use could we make of Hiouen-thsang’s chronology, who follows the system of the Northern, and not of the Ceylonese, Buddhists, who makes Aśoka to reign 100 years after Buddha, Kanishka 400, the king of Himatala 600, and so on? We should first have to determine what, according to Hiouen-thsang, was the real date of Buddha’s Nirvâṇa, and what was the era used at his time in the monasteries of Northern India; whether he altered the dates, assigned by the Buddhists of India to the various events of their traditional history, according to the standard of the Chinese Buddhist chronology, or whether he simply repeated the dates, such as they were communicated to him in the different places which he visited. All these questions would have to be answered, and if they could be answered, we should in the end only arrive at the date of a Kâtyâyana, but not of the Kâtyâyana with whom we are concerned.