History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v7.c91.171

v7.c91.171

There is a great difference between the Gītā and the Nārāyaṇīya section. In the former, though the Supreme Soul is called Vāsudeva,¹⁵⁶¹ the doctrine of the four vyūhas, that is very characteristic of the Nārāyaṇīya section, is totally absent and further even the names of Saṅkarṣaṇa, Pradyumna and Aniruddha do not occur in the Gītā. In my opinion the Gītā is the older of the two, as it propounds the general doctrine of bhakti, while the Pāñcarātra doctrine in the Nārāyaṇīya is only one of the several bhakti schools. Moreover, the Nārāyaṇīya section represents that Gītā had already been proclaimed and that the knowledge brought from Śvetadvīpa by Nārada is the same as that declared in the Harigītā (chap. 346. 10-11, 348. 53-54). Śānti (348. 55-57) mentions that there was only one vyūha or there were two, three or four and that the Ekāntins attached great importance to ahiṁsā. Besides, the worship of Vāsudeva is older than Pāṇini, since¹⁵⁶² Pāṇini teaches the formation of the word Vāsudevaka as meaning 'one whose object of worship is Vāsudeva'. Vide Dr Bhandarkar's 'Vaiṣṇavism, Śaivism &c.' paragraphs 2-10 (pp. 3-19 of vol IV of the collected works) for the antiquity of Vāsudeva worship. The general view of most medieval writers on Dharmaśāstra about Pāñcarātra is represented by the Pārijāta quoted in the K. R. that the Pāñcarātra¹⁵⁶³ and Pāśupata śāstras are authoritative only so far as they are not opposed to the Vedas. This was the view of the Sūtasaṁhitā also, on which a commentary was composed by the famous Mādhavācārya.