Page 590 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

PRIMITIVE ARYAN CULTURE AND RELIGION 371
gloss on Pllnini IV, 3, 101, solves the question by making a
distinction between the language (the succession of words or letters,
varrJanupurvi, as we find it in the present texts) of the Vedas and
their contents ( artha ), and observing that the question of the eternity
of the Vedas refers to their sense which is eternal or permanent
( artho nityalz ), and not to the order of their letters, which has not
always remained the same ( vgrrJanupurvi anitya ), and that it is
through this difference in the latter respect that we have the different
versions of Kathas, Kalapas, Mudakas, Pippaladas and so on.
This view is opposed to that of the Mimarnsakas who hold both
sense and order of words to be eternal. But Patanjali is led to
reject the doctrine of the eternity of the order of words, because
in that case we cannot account for the different versions or
Shakhas of the same Veda, all of which are considered to be
equally authoritative though their verbal readings are sometimes
different. Patanjali, as explained by his commentators Kaiyya~a,
and Nagoji Bhatta, ascribes this difference in the different versions
of the Veda to the loss of the Vedic text in the pralayas or deluges
which occasionally overtake the world and their reproduction or
repromulgation, at the beginning of eacb new age, by the sages
who survived, according to their remembrance.* Each manvantara
or age has thus a Veda of its own which differs only in expression
and not in sense from the ante-diluvian Veda, and that different
recensions of co-ordinate authority of the same Veda are due to
the difference in the remembrance of the Ri~his whose names are
associated with the different Shakhas, and who repromulgate, at
the beginning of the new age, the knowledge inherited by them, as
a sacred trust, from their forefathers in the preceding Kalpa.
This view substantially accords with that of Vyasa as reccorded
in the verse from the Mahabharata quoted above. The later
expositors of the different schools of philosophy have further
developed these views of the S1'ttra-writers and criticised or
defended the doctrine of the self-demonstrated authority of the

* Patanjali's words are-WG ~ if ~ 'ii~ f,miff ~for
'i3~ftt I ~~T ~~ ~T ~<!~ ~ {'ITS~ I ~r~:~r~~cffif ifilOiii
~ ~ qcqeJG:'Iil'ilffi II N!goji Bha~~a in his gloss quotes the verse-
~~ ~ ~~rstlf~; and observes that "ffii"T ~~r '{~'li~4'4Q
( ~ig. X, r 90, 3) does not require ItS to assume that the order of words
was the same in the new Kalpa. See Muir 0. S. T. Yo!. III, pp. 96-97.