Materials for the Study of the Early History of the Vaishnava Sect c7.4

c7.4

Valuable information regarding this faith has been supplied by several eminent scholars, Western as well as Indian, e.g., Jones, Colebrooke, Wilson, Weber, Lorinser, Lassen, Muir, Bühler, Barth, Hopkins, Grierson, Garbe, Schrader, Niveditā, Macnicol, Keith, Vogel, Barnett, Hill, Carpenter, Eliot, Telang, Bhandarkar, Sukthankar, T. Rājagopāla Chariar, S. K. Aiyangar, Govindāchārya Swāmin, Dr. Seal, Bankimchandra, R. P. Chanda and others. The author has consulted their works and the following books and journals, viz., the Rig Veda, the Aitareya and the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇas, the Chhāndogya, Kaṭha and Śvetāśvatara Upanishads, the Taittirīya Āraṇyaka, the Nirukta of Yāska, the Ashṭādhyāyī of Pāṇini, the Mahābhāshya of Patañjali, the Sūtras of Bodhāyana, the Mahābhārata including the translations by P. C. Ray and M. N. Dutt, the Matsya, Vāyu, Vishṇu and Bhāgavata Purāṇas, the Ahirbudhnya Saṃhitā, the Harsha-Charita and the Kādambarī of Bāṇa, Śaṅkara’s Commentary on the Sūtras of Bādarāyaṇa, the Buddhist Suttas and Jātakas, the works of Aśvaghosha, the Jaina Sūtras, the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, the Vienna Oriental Journal, the Indian Antiquary, the Epigraphia Indica, the Corpus *Inscriptionum Indicarum*, Macdonell and Keith's *Vedic Index*, Sorrensen's *Index of Names in the Mahābhārata* and other works references to which will be found in the following pages. In preparing these lectures the author has been mainly guided by the evidence of archæology, remembering the famous dictum of Colebrooke:¹ “In the scarcity of authentic materials for the ancient, and even for the modern, history of the Hindu race, importance is justly attached to all genuine monuments and especially inscriptions on stone and metal.” He has also made use of literature to which an early date can be assigned, and which is comparatively free from late interpolations, *viz.*, (i) Pre-Buddhistic Vedic literature, (ii) ancient works to which a date in a definite epoch can be assigned, *e.g.*, the *Artha-Śāstra* attributed to Kauṭilya, the *Mahābhāshya* of Patañjali, the *Indika* of Megasthenes, the works of Aśvaghosha, etc., and (iii) works on Vāsudeva free from any Vaishṇava bias, *e.g.*, the *Ghata Jātaka* and the *Uttarādhyayana Sūtra*. The epics and the Purāṇas have been utilised very sparingly because of the numerous interpolations they contain and the uncertainty of their chronology.