The History of Indian Literature c8.296

c8.296

any rate, assume anything like a long interval between the two recensions; they resemble each other too closely for this, and we should perhaps do better to regard their distinction as a geographical one, orthoepic divergencies generally being best explained by geographical reasons. As to the exact date to be ascribed to these recensions, it may be, as has already been stated in our general survey (p. 10), that we have here historical ground to go upon—a thing which so seldom happens in this field. Arrian, quoting from Megasthenes, mentions a people called *Μαδιανδινοί*, "through whose country flows the river Andhomatí," and I have ventured to suggest that we should understand by these the Mádhyamdinas,¹²⁰ after whom one of these schools is named, and that therefore this school was either then already in existence, or else grew up at that time or soon afterwards.∗ The matter cannot indeed be looked upon as certain, for this reason, that *mádhyamdina*, 'southern,' might apply in general to any southern people or any southern school; and, as a matter of fact, we find mention of *mádhyamdina-Kauthumás*, 'southern Kauthumas.'† In the main, however, this date suits so perfectly that the conjecture is at least not to be rejected offhand. From this, of course, the question of the time of origin of the White Yajus must be strictly separated; it can only be solved from the evidence contained in the work itself. Here our special task consists in separating the different portions of it, which in its present form are bound up in one whole. Fortunately we have still data enough here to enable us to determine the priority or posteriority of the several portions.