formly contained any definite number of stanzas, i. e. to say, some
may have contained a few less and some a few more than 700 stanzas
Having collated them he must have come to the conclusion that the
700 which he had decided to comment upon must have been the only
ones therein as handed down from the time when some previous
commentator, such as the Vrttikara whom he refers to, took out this
episode from the Mahabharata for the first time since Vyasa incorporated
it therein, looking upon it as a work on philosophy having an in.
dependent value of its own and for the guidance of his successors in
the field of Gita exegetics noted down that number in the introductory
part of his Bhagya. The MSS. which may have found their way into
Ka&mir may be of that class only which may have contained more
than 700 stanzas and Vasugupta, the founder of the Trika schoolhaving
commented upon the text as so made up, his followers Ramakaitha,
Bhaskara, Abhinavagupta, Anandavardhana and La8akaka may have done
so on believing that to be the correct text of the Gild, as well they might
because it was the only one known to them. This is possible because
is a historical fact that Lalitaditya Muktapida, who ruled over KH&mir
from A.D. 724 to 760 i.e. till 28 years prior to the well-established
date of the birth of Sankara, had extended his kingdom towards the
south as far as Bengal in the East and Gujarat on the West and had to
retrace his steps when his progress was checked near the bank of the
Narmada and it is quite likely that while moving about outside KEEmir
he may have come in contact with several learned men and may, while
returning to his own province, have taken with himself some of them
and the Mss. of the standard works known to them, amongst which
there must be those of the Gia. Unless this were so, we cannot
account for the most patent fact that none of the Kasmirian poets,
dramatists, rhetoricians, philosophers and others, whose names are
famous in the history of Sanskrit literature such as Rajasekhara,
Bihapa, Keemaraja, Bhaskara, Gauda Abhinanda and Abhinavagupta,
dates from a time prior to the beginning of the 9th century A. D. In
fact a Kahmirian Paidit of modern times, Paidit Mukundarीm Sastri
has admitted in the Introduction to his edition of the tearcratya
jagani" that KEmir was a benighted province in the 8th and
9th centuries and most probably till then and a battle-ground for the
teachers of various rival schools and sects, that the people residing
1. Literary evidence of a MS. of the Yogadisilkha having been chus actually taken
from Ayodhy to Kakmir by Brahmanas called Siddhas because of their spiritual
achievements, is contained in a tanka of the Yogaritha of Gauda Abhinanda eated
Laghu Yogavaicha, because it is much amall a a compared with that comment
upon by Anandabodha Yati, namely v. 16.16 (N, B. P. edition, 1937, P. 835)
2. Kafmt seriew of Texts and studies, vol, XXII ( 1918), Introduction,
PP. I to IV.
