372 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
the Bhagvat Gita and the Mahayan Buddhism and that there similarities are the result of Mahayana Buddhism borrowing its ideas from the Bhagvat Gita. Behind these remarks there is no evidence of special research either on the part of Winternitz, Kern or Mr. Tilak. All of them seem to be led away by the assumption that the Bhagvat Gita is earlier than Mahayana Buddhism.
This leads me to examine the question of the date of the Bhagvat Gita particularly with reference to the theory as put forth by Mr. Tilak. Mr. Tilak [1] is of opinion that the Gita is part of the Mahabharata and that both have been written by one and the same author named Vyasa and consequently the date of the Mahabharata must be the date of the Bhagvat Gita. The Mahabharata, Mr. Tilak argues, must have been written at least 500 years before the Shaka Era on the groung that the stories contained in the Mahabharata were known to Megasthenes who was in India about 300 B.C. as a Greek ambassador to the court of Chandragupta Maurya. The Shaka Era began in 78 A.D. On this basis it follows that the Bhagvat Gita must have been composed before 422 B.C. This is his view about the date of the composition of the present Gita. According to him, the original Gita must have been some centuries older than Mahabharata If reliance be placed on the tradition referred to in the Bhagvat Gita that the religion of the Bhagvat Gita was taught by Nara to Narayan in very ancient times. Mr. Tilak’s theory as to the date of the composition of the Mahabharata is untenable. In the first place, it assumes that the whole of the Bhagvat Gita and the whole of Mahabharat have been written at one stretch, at one time and by one hand. There is no warrant for such an assumption, either in tradition, or in the internal evidence of these two treatises. Confining the discussion to the Mahabharata the assumption made by Mr. Tilak is quite opposed to well-known Indian traditions. This tradition divides the compostion of the Mahabharata into three stages; (1) Jaya
(2) Bharata and (3) Mahabharata and assigns to each part a different author. According to this tradition Vyasa was the author of the 1st edition so to say of the Mahabharata called ‘Jaya’. Of the Second Edition called ‘Bharata’ tradition assigns the authorship to Vaishampayana and that of the Third Edition called Mahabharata to ‘Sauti’. That this tradition is well-founded has been confirmed by the researches of Prof. Hopkins based on the examination of. internal evidence furnished by the Mahabharata. According to Prof. Hopkins [2] there have been several stages in the composition of the Mahabharata. As has been pointed
1 Gita Rahasya Vol. II p. 791-800.
2 The Great Epic of India p. 398.