Hindu Polity: A Constitutional History of India in Hindu Times c32.s1.19

c32.s1.19

One has to agree when Dr. Jolly, very rightly, says that there is a rare unity of plan and structure pervading the whole work (p. 5). The device beginning with contents and ending with the notes on the system of the work which unifies the whole work, and the cross references in the body of the work leave no doubt that the whole work is by one and the same author. There is also common ground when he shows that the book as we have it (I may add, but for faulty readings and copyist's mistakes) is the same which existed about 400 A. C. (pp. 8, 9, 12.) Thirty quotations in the Tantrākhyāyikā, and citations in later books prove it Thus the question in controversy is reduced to this, when was the AŚ. written between 300 B. C. and 400 A. C. (This limit is further narrowed down by Jolly's view, rightly held, that Vātsyāyana had before him the AŚ. while writing the Ś. and he takes the time of the KŚ., to be "the fourth cen. or so," and consequently places the AŚ. in the third century A. C. (pp. 29, 43).)