History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v7.c94.165

v7.c94.165

The Bhāṣya on Y. S. II. 42 quotes a verse with the words ‘tathā coktam’ (it has also been said), which is identical with a verse from the Śāntiparva.²²⁹⁵ It is most unlikely that an author will rely on his own work for supporting a proposition propounded in another work of his own. Besides, the Yogabhāṣya quotes on Y. S. I. 28 a verse, which is Viṣṇupurāṇa²²⁹⁶ VI. 6. 2. The Viṣṇupurāṇa is one of the earliest among extant Purāṇas (vide above pp. 907-909) and cannot be assigned to a date later than the 3rd century A. D. Therefore, the Yogabhāṣya which quotes the Mahābhārata and the Viṣṇupurāṇa may be assigned to about 4th century A. D. As argued above, the Y. S. would therefore have to be assigned to a date not later than the 2nd or 3rd century A. D. Though the present writer holds that the Yoga that is said to be refuted in V. S. II. 1. 3 is not that of the Yogasūtra but the Yoga found in the Śāntiparva, yet he is not prepared to place the present Yogasūtra earlier than the 2nd century B. C. Mr. K. K. Kolhatkar in his very exhaustive and learned Introduction (in Marathi) asserts (on p. 126) that the Yogasūtra is later by 3000 years than the Brahmasūtra and that the Bhagavadgītā was composed about 5000 years before the present day (p. 224). But he adduces no evidence for such an ancient date for that work. He probably relies on the traditions that Vyāsa, the reputed author of the Mahābhārata (including the Gītā), flourished towards the end of the Dvāpara age and that Kaliyuga started in 3179 B. C. Modern critical scholarship does not accept these traditional datings.