वेदों की प्राचीनता एवं काल-निर्णय / ओरायन (लोकमान्य बाल गंगाधर तिलक - खगोलीय वैदिक शोध)

PRIMITIVE ARYAN CULTURE AND RELIGION. 451 eternity of sound or word, but hold that the authority of the Vedas is established by the fact of their having emanated from competent (ápta) persons who had an intuitive percep- tion of duty (sâkshâtkṛita dharmâṇaḥ, as Yâska puts it), and whose competence is fully proved by the efficacy of such of the Vedic injunctions as relate to mundane matters, and can, therefore, be tested by experience; while the author of the Vaisheṣhika Sûtras clearly refers (I, 1, 3) the Veda. to Îshvara or God as its framer. The Sâṅkhyas (Sâṅkhya Sû- tras, V, 40-51) agree with the Naiyâyikas in rejecting the doctrine of the eternity of the connection of a word with its meaning; and though they regard the Veda as paurusheya in the sense that it emanated from the Primeval Purusha, yet they maintain that it was not the result of a conscious effort on the part of this Purusha, but only an unconscious emanation from him like his breathing. According to this view the Veda cannot be called eternal in the same sense as the Mîmâmsa- kas have done, and, therefore, the texts which assert the eter- nity of the Vedas, are said to refer merely to "the un- broken continuity of the stream of homogeneous succession," (Veda-nityatâ-vâkyâni cha sajâtîyânupûrvî-pravâhânuchcheda-parâṇi).* Patanjali, the great grammarian, in his gloss on Pâṇini IV, 3, 101, solves the question by making a distinction between the language (the succession of words or letters, varṇânupûrvî, as we find it in the present texts) of the Vedas and their contents (artha), and observing that the question of the eter- nity of the Vedas refers to their sense which is eternal or permanent (artho nityaḥ), and not to the order of their letters, which has not always remained the same (varṇânupûrvî anityâ), and that it is through this difference

• Cf. Vedântaparibhâshâ Âgama-parichcheda, p. 55, quoted in Mahâmahopâdhyâya Jhalkikar's Nyâya-kosha, 2nd Ed. p. 736. s. v. वेदः—सर्गाद्यकाले परमेश्वरः पूर्वसर्गसिद्धवेदानुपूर्वीसमानानुपूर्वीकं वेदं विर- चितवान् न तु तद्विजातीयं वेदम् ।