Gussner_A Stylometric Study of the Authorship of Seventeen Sanskrit Hymns Attributed to Śaṅkara

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A Stylometric Study of the Authorship of Seventeen Sanskrit Hymns Attributed to akara Author(s): Robert E. Gussner Source: Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 96, No. 2 (Apr. - Jun., 1976), pp. 259-267

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A STYLOMETRIC STUDY OF THE AUTHORSHIP OF SEVENTEEN SANSKRIT HYMNS ATTRIBUTED TO SANKARA

ROBERT E. GUSSNER

UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT

By counting the frequency of selected words in gankara's Upadesasahasri, and comparing these frequencies with those in seventeen hymns of praise (stotras) most commonly ascribed to gankara, the author concludes that fifteen of these hymns were not composed by the great advaitin.

This study introduces the application of statistical methods to vocabulary study in Sanskrit works, and furnishes a body of stylometric data as a criterion against which to test the authenticity of other metrical works ascribed to anikara.

The conclusions reached by stylistic analysis are buttressed by analysing the meaning of the words bhakti (devotion), ananda (bliss) and hrd (heart) in the Upadedasahasri and the stotra corpus. In this way it is possible to reconstruct the growth of a warm devotional trend in India's non-dualistic tradition and to show that stotias manifest a strong desire to popularize Vedanta and to harmonize it with bhakti movements.

THIS PAPER SUMMARIZES a doctoral dissertation on a corpus of advaitic stotras (hymns of praise) traditionally ascribed to the great Veddntin, Safi- kara, whose non-dualism so dominates the Hindu renaissance of our time.1 My method has been to establish a reliable text for these works by col- lating various manuscript readings and then comparing word-frequencies and word meanings in this corpus of stotras with those in the Upadesa- sahasri (hereafter Upad), the only verse work by Safikara whose authenticity is well established.2

1 I have selected these hymns, out of more than 300 ascribed to ?ainkara, partly because of their advaitic content and partly because an Indian scholar and editor, H. R. Bhagavat, has made the critical judgment that only these are genuine. My initial presumption was that the chances were best to find anfikara's authentic stotras, if they exist, among these works. The titles as given by Bhagavat are Advaitapaicakam, Atmasatkam, UpadeSa- paficakam, Kaglpaficakam, Kaupinapaficakam, Carpata- pafijarikistotram, Daksinfamrtistotram, Dvadagapanja- rikfstotram, Dhanyastakam, Nirgunamanasapuja, Nirva- namafijarl, Para Pfij, Manisapaincakam, Vijfiinanauki, Satpadistotram, and the Harim Ide.

2 V. Raghavan has shown that the Upad is a genuine work of the Adi-Sankara by external reference in Bhaska- ra's Gitabha.syam. Moreover, verses 5:1 and 18:122 of the Upad are quoted in that work in the context of refuting gaikara. See V. Raghavan, "The UpadeSasahasri of gaAkaracarya and the Mutual Chronology of gaikaraca-

To judge the significance of the variations in word-frequencies that I discovered, I have used the familiar Chi square formula (X2), a minimal form of statistical analysis that indicates how probable it is that two works could have been authored by the same man.3 I believe this to be the first use of this method on questions of authorship in Sanskrit studies.4 With these word counts,

rya and Bhaskara," in Wiener Zeitschrift Fur Die Kunde Siid- und Ostasiens, XI (1967), 137-39. S. Mayeda's work showing similarity of the concepts of the Upad with gafkara's commentaries supplements Raghavan's evidence. See Sengaku Mayeda, "The Authenticity of the Upadesasahasri Ascribed to gafikara," in the Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 85 (April-June 1965), pp. 178-96.

3 The Chi square formula is:

X2 Z (observed number- expected number 2 expected number

where Z stands for the sum of the two cells involved, in this case the two groups of writings alledgedly by gankara. To be conservative I have used one degree of freedom (df) and the "correction for continuity" of minus 1/2 for each cell.

4 S. K. De has challenged stylistic analysis in general, although I doubt that he had quantitative word analysis specifically in mind. Many stylistic methods are challenged by specialists in the field, but vocabulary analysis is on the whole highly regarded. Rebecca Posner, for example, says, "Statistical methods have been used...

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Journal of the American Oriental Society 96.2 (1976)

I have also attempted to establish a body of stylometric data for Safikara's verse work com- parable to that furnished by Kathe Marschner in 1933 for his prose work.5 My method differs from hers, however, in relying upon stylometric differences instead of positive similarities. As the latter were not in evidence, I had to seek out major and indisputable differences in word frequencies and in the meaning of words as between the Upad and the stotras.

In the latter connection, I have studied the meaning of three key terms in these works-the words for bliss (ananda), heart (hrd), and devotion (bhakti). The use of these words in the stotras proved to be significantly different from that in the Upad. Thus the findings from two lines of enquiry were mutually supporting.

My basis for choosing words to count has been (1) to select words that were most frequent in one or the other text, that is, a kind of self-selec- tion; (2) to select words whose aptness might not be expected to vary greatly between instructional writing and devotional hymns; and (3) to study adverbs whose frequency might reasonably be relatively independent of changing subject matter.

A problem with this method is that the Upad and the stotras are different classes of writings; one teaches, the other extols. But this difficulty in Sanskrit verse is not as great as one would initially suppose. In verse context, as distinct from prose commentaries, the difference between instructive couplets and stotras can be slight. Some stotras are frankly instructional and are even occasionally called prakaranas (treatise, man- ual). Among our stotras, the Harim Ide, Advaita- paiicakam, and UpadeSapaicakam have been so

When the population of potential authors is small, the probability of obtaining significant results from even a simple statistical test is quite great." Rebecca Posner, "Use and Abuse of Stylistic Statistics," in Archivum Linguisticum, Vol. 15 (June 1963), p. 113. Stephen Ullman, a critic of the statistical approach in stylistics concedes that, "There are at least three aspects of style study which can derive very real benefit from numerical criteria... it may help us establish authorship ... it may throw light on the unity of poems ... and determine the chronology of writings by the same author." Stephen Ullman, Language and Style (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1964), pp. 119-20.

5 Kathe Marschner, Zur Verfasserfrage des dem San- karacdrya zugeschriebenen Brhaddranyakopanisad-Bhasya (typescript; Berlin: Alfred Lindner Verlag, 1933).

designated and they contain much "philosophical" instruction. And both classes of writings share a concern to explicate discipline as well as doctrine and so tend to the same vocabulary. And both types of writing intend to commend the advaitic tradition (sampraddya) and certain major terms would seem to be as useful for that purpose in one context as another. It is these terms, to a large extent, with which we have worked-terms denoting what is desirable or undesirable; that is, what one should seek, such as mukti (liberation) or jihna (knowledge) and avoid, such as duhkha (ill) or samsara (rebirth). In some cases rather than attempt to show positively that certain words belong as much in one context as in another, I have adopted a simpler negative criterion of using words against which no obvious case can be made so far as I can see.

In addition to changes of vocabulary induced by different classes of writings, it is possible that vocabulary might change with the subject being treated, or between one's youth and one's maturi- ty. But in the case of the works involved the subject matter does not vary significantly. They are in the nature of surveys and certainly avoid a one-subject vocabulary except for the eighteenth chapter of the Upad. And Sanikara, if tradition is correct, did not live long enough to have several distinct phases in his career. At any rate, there is no sign of important changes of vocabulary or concept in his huge prose corpus and the Upad agrees closely with that. If all of these objections to the statistical method were, nevertheless, some- how cogent, we could still place some reliance upon adverb, conjunction, and particle counts. If they reveal great differences, that tends to indicate that other differences in general vocabulary may be due to a difference of author rather than any of these other factors. And such is the case with this material: the differences in the use of adverbs and conjunctions is so great that the probability of these variations occurring by chance in the work of one author is less than one in a thousand (see Table 2).

Finally there is the question of the adequacy of the sample. Two matters are relevant here: in the first place, the Chi square formula is specifically designed to work with as few as five expected instances. In most cases we have many times that number and in no case less than twelve. In the second place, a word is frequent in the vocabulary of a Sanskrit author if it occurs more than once in a hundred lines in verse composition. In

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GUSSNER: Stylometric Study of Hymns Attributed to Sankara

TABLE 1

FREQUENCY OF SELECTED WORDS IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA

Word

sarvam

karma aham yogah jnanam atma brahma yajfiah indriyam idam deham purusah ekam duhkham dharmah bhaktih avyayam jagat graddha graddha tamah avyaktam muktah hrd vidya moksah Inaya sa.msarah cit Tuddhah anandah

Single or First in a Compound

164 117 110

82 67 27 52 34 32 40 30 28 27 16 18 19 21 19 16 16 16 15 7 8 6 4 4 1 2 0 0

Second or Later in

Compound 1

21 0

15 7

50 3

10 10

0 0 0 0

11 9 5 0 0 1 1 0 0 6 2 1 1 1 2 0 2 0

Total Occurrences

165 138 110

97 74 77 55 44 42 40 30 28 27 27 27 24 21 19 17 17 16 15 13 10

7 5 5 3 2 2 0

Per Line Frequency

1/8.98 1/10.6 1/13.3 1/15 1/19.7 1/18.9 1/26.5 1/33.2 1/34.8 1/36.5 1/48.6 1/52 1/54 1/54 1/54 1/60.8 1/69.5 1/75.3 1/85.9 1/85.9 1/99.2 1/97.3 1/112.5 1/146 1/208 1/292 1/292 1/486 1/730 1/730 0/1460

the Gitd, for example, I calculate that only about three percent of the words are of that frequency. A very high order of frequency is one in nine lines; the word "all" (sarvam) is of that frequency, and aside from the pronouns in the Gita is its most common word. Only about forty-seven words in the Gitf occur more than once in a hundred lines.

Those with a feel for the vocabulary of the Gitd will be interested to check their impressions against Table 1 prepared from Jacobs Concordance to the Upanisads and Gitd and from B. G. Tilak's Gitd Rahasya. It will show, I think, that words one feels are very common in the Gitd are really not that common. Avyaktam (unmanifested), for in-

stance, seems common and is certainly conceptual- ly important in the Gitd, yet it occurs only once in ninety-seven lines. Tamah (darkness) is just under once in one hundred lines.

I. Let us proceed directly, then, to differences in word-frequency between the stotras under study and the Upad. Then we shall shift to a comparison of the meanings of specific words.

Table 2 reveals some extreme divergencies between the two-word populations and some very high levels of significance. On the table the figure .001 represents a probability of one in 1,000 that the two works could be by the same author. This

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is the minimum level for the .001 figure. Some of mine are actually far over one chance in 2,000, but it is customary to give only the .001 figure, without indicating finer gradations, until one reaches a .0001 level of significance. The figure .10 (or 0.1) represents ten chances in 100; .05 represents five in 100; .02 represents two chances in 100. (In most social science research the .05 level begins to mark the difference between a significant variation and a chance one; .02 is a more conservative level.

In our table most of the words are at the .001 level. The combined and cumulative improbability of this many words at this high a level is very great. These two works almost certainly are not by the same man. Of all the words we studied, only three failed to show statistically significant differences: jnfnam (once in twenty-four lines compared to once in 22), ajninam (once in fifty-nine lines compared to once in seventy-three), and jiah (once in thirty-five lines compared to once in fifty-one).

Not shown on the table, but similar was the case with the words for sky or ether, such as uyomah, gaganam, ambaram, kham, nabhah, and aka6ah. One or another of these occurs in ana- logies comparing the pure Self to the sky twenty- eight times in the Upad, or once in forty eight lines. Vyoma is most frequent with twelve instances and kham is used seven times. Saiikara is very fond of this analogy. In the stotras the sky analogy is used but four times for a per line frequency of once in 128 lines. Vyoma occurs once, but kham not at all. The chances of this variation are one in a hundred (7.60 significant at the .01 level).

Note especially the wide variations in the adverbs "as" (yatha) and "so" (tathd) and the word "but" (tu). Note also the correlative construction yadvat/tadvat which does not occur at all in the stotras.

Finally, note that the words for the pure witness (drk, drsih, drastf, adhyaksah, and jnidt) are common in the Upad, but entirely missing in the

3LE 2

WORDS EXPECTED TO HAVE EQUAL FREQUENCY IN THE UPADEgASAHASRI AND VEDANTA STOTRAS OCCURRING AT LEAST ONCE IN ONE E HUNDRED LINES IN ONE ORK

AND HAVING AN EXPECTED FREQUENCY ABOVE FIVE AVERAGED

Upad Occur-

Wo d

adhyaksah anandah avidya jnata tatha tu duhkham drk drsih drasta brahma bhaktih maya mok$ah muktir yatha yadvat tadvat Suddhah sa?hsarah hrd

Stotra Per Occur- Per

rences Line rences Line i

24 1/65 1 1/1360

21 1/65 35 1/36

113 1/12 60 1/23 48 1/28 18 1/75 31 1/44 29 1/46 46 1/30

1 1/1360 8 1/171

66 1/21 99 1/14 26 1/55 43 1/32 15 1/91 2 1/680

0 0/512 25 1/20

2 1/256 4 1/138 5 1/102 8 1/64 3 1/170 0 0/512 4 1/138 0 0/512

34 1/15 14 1/36 10 1/52 13 1/39 4 1/128 0 0/512 7 1/73

50 1/10 11 1/46

1

Text Sources: for the Upad, Jagad5nanda, A Thousand Te Math, 1970); for the Vedanta Stotras, Robert Gussner, colla

Chi Level of Stotra Square Signifi- 4djusted Score cance 00.00 21.04 .001 66.00 60.12 .001

5.30 8.50 .010 10.60 13.04 .001 13.35 78.90 .001 21.20 15.60 .001

7.95 27.00 .001 00.00 16.06 .001 10.56 9.60 .010 00.00 27.04 .001 90.10 13.60 .001 37.00 32.00 .001 26.50 8.80 .010 34.45 9.80 .010 10.60 68.00 .001 00.00 39.40 .001 18.55 8.80 .010 32.50 46.00 .001 29.05 21.80 .001

eachings (Madras: Ramakrishna Lted text, Ph. D. Thesis, 1973.

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GUSSNER: Stylometric Study of Hymns Attributed to Saklcara

stotras except for a few instances of jiiata and drsih. Central to Saikara's thought was the insight that the Supreme Self is continuous precisely because it never becomes an object of temporary perception and is then replaced by another object of perception. It is never taken (agrahitam) or discarded (atyaktam, apo.dha, aheya). This idea does not occur in the stotras and three out of five of Safikara's very favorite words for the pure witness never appear in the hymns.

Since this application of statistical method is new in the case of Safikara's works and seems to work so dramatically, it is well to cast a critical eye upon aspects of our method again. Specifically we should ask, "If it is so readily possible to obtain high levels of significance between two titles, what would be' the situation if we noted distribution]of words internal to the work?" This will throw light upon the reliability of the method and upon one of its apparent requirements.

What we need to do, as a check to our method, is to ask ourselves if word frequencies vary significantly within halves of a work. That is, do words all within the Upad (chosen because of its greater length) occur significantly more frequently in, say, the first half of the work than in the last half, or vice versa? The answer is, a few yes, most no. For example, in the case of the word "tu" there are sixty occurrences and exactly half of them, thirty, are before verse 17:15 and thirty after. This verse is the mid-point of the Upad. In the case of the word "tathi," the division is similarly even, fifty-six in one part and fifty- seven in the other. The word "dhi" divides twenty- six to twenty-three. The word "jnianam" divides thirty-four against thirty-two. And a great many other words show almost perfect internal con- sistency.

But some are less than perfect. Moksalmuktih divides thirty-seven to twenty-nine and this may seem questionable. However, statistically there are thirty to forty chances in 100 that this would happen by chance in one author's work (.739 significant at the 0.5 level). Variation does not even begin to be significant at a doubtful level on most charts until one has obtained at least an .05 level. The word yathd divides fifty-five to forty-five, a score of 1.01, which again falls far short of the .05 level, since there are more than twenty chances in a hundred that this could happen by chance. Other words at the level of about twenty chances in a hundred are ekam (22- 13) and brahman (30-16). The greatest internal

difference among the words tabulated is that for the word duhkham, which divides ten to thirty eight in favor of the last half of the work, where all thirty-eight instances in the latter portion occur in the eighteenth chapter. This is significant at a score of 15.00 and the .001 level. Something other than chance must be at work here. And indeed there is: a sustained discussion from verses 18:161 to 18:191 about ego, Self, and pain and another earlier in the chapter. This chapter is 232 verses long, nearly a fourth of the work in itself and it is heavily concerned with the ending of suffering through knowledge and the ultimate unreality of apparent suffering. And Saiikara has a penchant for playing with the word duhkham two to four times in a single verse (see verses 16:8, 16:9, 18:193, 18:212, 18:76, 18:163, 18:166, 18:162, 18:169, 18:186, and 18:188). From this we recall three cardinal rules governing the application of this statistical method.

In the first place one should take a whole work. One cannot sample a work if one thereby omits a major subject that is being treated in a sustained way in one part of the work. In the second place one cannot rely upon a work that treats only one subject in isolation. If the eighteenth chapter of the Upad had happened to come down to us as a separate treatise on suffering (and upon how words must be used, its other main topic), it would have been of little use for analysis of an-- kara's metrical style. Because of subject speciali- zation there is a handful of fairly common words that simply cut off in chapter eighteen or are less called for, even though they have appeared consistently through the work. Vidya, for example, simply stops at the end of chapter seventeen, and is on that account internally inconsistent at a moderately significant level. The vocabulary is untypical here because of the subject.

Incidentally, the word vidyd is also strongly evidential that the first chapter of the Upad is spurious and there is evidence that the last chapter is spurious as well, but this is not the place to go into that. However, these interpolations need not bother us, for they are each only twenty-six verses in length, and while word-counts can detect their inauthenticity, their verses are so few that their spurious nature does not seriously affect the statistics used in our main comparison, which is with the stotra corpus, not the halves of the Upad.

In the third place, if there is any doubt about a work meeting these first two requirements, one should study only words incidental to the con-

263



tent. In Sanskrit these seem to include the adverbs we have hit upon. In addition, perhaps eva, evam, ca, hi, and words like rupam and other common suffixes might be useful. Further work would doubtless improve upon these first guesses and yield a more reliable set of words than we have had in our study.

We are now in a position to move on to a comparison of content in the case of some words. Since most of our words, largely self-chosen by virtue of frequency, or by conceptual centrality, offer less than one chance in a thousand that these two works are by the same man, we have a strong initial basis for denying Safikara's authorship of these particular stotras. Analysis of the meaning of these words will yield additional evidence.

II. CONTENT COMPARISON OF THE STOTRAS AND THE UPADESASAHASRI.

We now consider in detail three terms, the words bhakti, hrd, and dnanda.

The word bhakti occurs but once in the Upad in any significant sense (verse 16:67). Elsewhere we find the root in words like avibhakta (15:15) or vibhaktam (19:22), meaning "divided" or un- divided" but these are insignificant.

In the one significant case (16:67) it says, srad- dhdbhakti puraskrtya hitvu sarvam anarjavam ve- dintasyaiva tattuvrthe vyisasyabhimatau tathd. "Possessing faith and devotion, having renounced all crookedness, one should have a firm under- standing of the meaning of the principles of Ve- danta, as well as of Vyasa."

Here the words sraddha and bhakti need mean no more than that the aspirant should have initially the qualities of dedication and dynamic con- viction. The immediate frame of reference is personal, not sectarian or doctrinal. It is not an argument about conflicting or complementary yoga paths. Although differing groups and teachings are mentioned in the preceding verses, the context has changed with this verse. Here the subject is the wise man (buddhah), and what he should choose to do when he has been instructed about the foregoing points of error in the thought of other schools. And it is devotion to Vedanta, not to a personal Lord, that is involved. What bhakti means is a general devotion to inquiry, presumably inquiry into the brahmasutras, and the teachings of Vyasa, an unclear reference.

In the stotras, however, bhakti has much wider meanings and a wider context. In verse 3:2 one is instructed to have firm devotion to the Lord

as bhagavat (the blessed one) (bhagavato bhaktir dr.dhd). In 8:12 and 15:2 the devotion is to be offered to the feet of the guru. In 15:9, bhakti is a state of devotional fervor (bhaktibhdvo) in which one recites a hymn. In many manuscripts the word is instrumental plural (bhaktibhavair) indicating a number of devotional states, reminiscent of the cataloguing of such states in later bhakti movements. In 4:5, bhakti seems to imply a specific and familiar path, rather than a mere personal quality. In 17:1 bhakti is the mood in which one praises Visnu. In 17:7, more significantly, it is the means by which one attains the subtle, unborn God that is beyond reason and abides in the heart (hrtstham bhaktair labhyam ajam suksmam atarkyam). Again in 17:11, the word bhaktdis is used to refer to a class of people. These are firm (acutya) devotees who merge with the Lord (yam pravisantyacyutabhaktds). In 17:16, again, bhakti is a means of attainment in the sense of a path to follow, rather than a personal and preliminary qualification of an aspirant. In 17:26 it is linked to worship (dradhya), and is a means to attain a vision of light existing in one's self (hrdy arkendvagnyokasamidyam taditdbham bhaktydrddhyehaiva visanty dtmani santam).

In 17:43, the word occurs twice-once in a context of praising Visnu with devotion (bhaktyd) and once in a more specialized context where the author calls himself a devotee (bhaktam) and asks that Visnu protect him.

From the foregoing, one can see that the word bhakti is more diversified in meaning in the stotra corpus under study than in the Upad, to say the least. And it is a more important religious cate- gory. In the stotras bhakti is often a special path, and designates a special class of people, not just the personal qualification of a student. Only twice in the stotras is bhakti used as a general sort of personal quality (17:5 and 17:24). In terms of the variety of meaning of the word devo- votion, we are a considerable distance from the Safikara of the Upad.

The word hrd (heart) in its principal forms, hrdi and hrdaya reveals a similar change. It occurs twice in the Upad (15:53 and 17:32) in reference to a "knot of the heart" (hrdayagranthir). But in the stotras, verse 5:5, one meditates on a Siva stotra in the heart while singing it. In 8:12 the heart is where one sees God (draksyasi nijahr- dayastham devam). In 9:5 and 13:1 one also per- ceives something in the heart. Reality often is described as vibrating in the heart. In 10:1 the

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GUSSNER: Stylometric Study of Hymns Attributed to Sanikara

atmalingam dwells in the lotus of the heart within the mdyapuri, the body characterized as the citadel of illusion. In 14:4 the word apparently just means "mind." In 17:7, 17:8, 17:13, and 17:26 something abides in the heart, variously the drsimatram (witness), or brahma, or light, or the Lord. In 17:6, interestingly, the heart is the place where the mind-stuff (citta) has been checked or controlled (ruddhva). It is the place in which the obstructing of the ongoing movement of the mind takes place. We can conclude that perceiving something tangible within the heart is commonly linked with the word hrd in the stotras. This harkens back to the theistic Upa- nisads, notably the Kathd, a type of allusion missing in the Upad. Enough has been said to suggest, again, that we seem to be in a different milieu in regard to the word hrd than we were in the Upad. Let us now consider the word ananda.

The one occurrence of this word in the metrical portion of the Upad is in 17:63. It comes in the context of five verses explaining how one becomes after realizing brahma. Verse 17:59 opens the series. Here one is not born again, is deathless, devoid of old age, free from fear, pure and all- knowing. The next three verses elaborate each of these characteristics of a man of realization. Verse 17:60 takes up birthlessness, and the exposition proceeds in order up to verse 17:63, the one in which the word dnanda occurs. But the point of this verse is not that the realized man is bliss- ful; it is rather that he is free from fear. It reads, "That knower of the Truth of the bliss of the Self has no cause of fear whatsoever. For, afraid of Him, speech, the mind, fire and the rest, act" (yasmdd bhitah pravartante viiimanah pikavada- yah/taddtmdnandatattvajno na bibheti kutaS cana). The verse refers to Taittriya Upanisad 2.8.1ff. This passage is primarily concerned with bliss in relation to the highest reality, and is one of the great Upanisadic paeans in praise of ainanda. But gafikara uses the verse to talk of fearlessness, not bliss. Bliss appears in this verse not so much because gafikara, left to himself would use the term or emphasize the concept, but because a passage on fearlessness that he is quoting employs the term. If the passage did not contain the word, it probably would never have appeared in the whole metrical portion of the Upad.

gafnkara's disinterest in bliss also appears in his lengthy commentary on the Anandavalli of the Taittiriya Upanisad. His comments are extra- ordinarily long, and he gives a perfunctory ex-

position of the degrees of bliss that are set forth in the text. But his long debate with an opponent never mentions bliss. It is on the question whether the "reaching" (or attainment) taught in the passage is a realization alone, or whether it is an attainment through reaching something separate from one's self, like that of a leech going from one leaf to another. Safikara's position is that there is no other thing that can reach the Self, or that the Self could reach. Attainment cannot be of oneself, for a leech does not reach itself.6 Safikara is interested in liberation as fearlessness and as a realization, not as bliss (dnanda) or as an achievement.

In the stotras, on the other hand, the word dnanda is used in three different contexts: it is an epithet denoting the inherent nature of brahma (1:3, 2:1-6, 10:5, 10:17, 11:4, 12:1, 12:5, 12:6, 15:3, 16:2, and 17:3); it is the ocean of bliss, one drop of which supplies all the lesser bliss in the world (10:6, 15:6, 15:8); and it is what one ac- quired in liberation, or even in some lesser insight (5:4, 10:25, 17:8, 17:10, 17:19, and 17:34).

Of course, Safikara in the Brhadaranyakopani- sadbhdsyam, acknowledges that brahma is bliss, even while he argues that one should not say that brahma has bliss as it is found in relative existence- that is, though the mode of relationship. But there is a difference between using the word bliss while commenting in a passage that requires it and using it to introduce the topic when composing independently of any commentary tradition. Cer- tainly Safikara does not stress the topic either in his commentaries or in an independent work, such as the Upad. In the stotras, on the other hand, it occurs once in every twenty lines. Once again we find a striking difference of word- frequency, meaning, and intentionality between the stotras and the Upad.

We can now summarize the situation with regard to these three terms and offer further generaliza- tions. All of the words had multiple contexts of meaning in the stotras, but had only one context of meaning in Sanikara, usually an unimportant and non-technical one. Bhakti in the stotras can refer to a path, a separate mode of the religious quest. Uses of the words hrd and dnanda suggest a trend toward personal feeling as a religious desiderata. That one attains something by devotion is accepted as natural in the stotras. A

6 Swami Gambhirananda, trans., Eight Upanisads (2 Vols.; Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1955), I, 364-84.

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perception in the heart can reveal the background Reality. The inner experience is prominently one of bliss. And experience itself is a larger consider- ation than it is in the Upad. There arguing for the continuousness of the Self, either on the authority of scripture or grounds of logical necessity, is central.

Differences of word-meaning and context of usage, when considered together with my statistical evidence, virtually preclude Safikara's authorship of these stotras as a unified corpus. These stotras are, in the main, an expression of the continuing vitality of the faith of men who found the work of Safikara to be of continuing significance in their lives, leading them to give further expression to the Advaitic perspective. We may hazard the guess that their attribution to Safikara was due both to piety and to the tradition that he wrote numerous stotras endorsing orthodox forms of theistic worship. His alleged endorsement of the six views (sanmata), and the worship at- tending each of them, has acted to unify Indian religious life. That tradition, extant in thirteenth and fourteenth century biographies of his debating triumphs in all quarters of India (digvijayas), has acted to minimize the linguistic, ethnic, and sectarian diversity of India in those times when circumstan- ces required greater internal unity than at other times-chiefly the eighth, thirteenth, and twentieth centuries. The eighth century was the time that

North and South India were coming together as a cultural continuum, the period around the thirteenth century saw the serious Muslim incursions, and the modern period the challenge of the West. And it is just in these three periods that the production of advaitic literature has been particu- larly prolific. From the standpoint of tradition it is doubtless helpful to have the vast authority of a Safikara endorsing Indian unity and the harmonizing of knowledge and devotion evident in many of these hymns. From the standpoint of faith, the knowledge that numberless poets and saints took up these ideas and composed these works can be equally impressive and reas- suring.

We can conclude by using the three words- bhakti, hrd, and dnanda-to show which stotras, in particular, seem to be by authors other than the original Sanikaracarya. We have seen from Table 2 that a general doubtfulness attends the whole stotra corpus because of discrepancies of overall wordfrequencies. Yet this doubt need not attend each individual stotra. However, a more specific doubt can attend those stotras that seem to be especially far from Safikara's word-usage in connection with the words bhakti, hrd, and ananda. These stotras and the doubtful words, sometimes one instance, sometimes several, are as follows.

Stotra One Stotra Two Stotra Three Stotra Four Stotra Five Stotra Eight Stotra Nine Stotra Ten Stotra Eleven Stotra Twelve Stotra Thirteen Stotra Fourteen Stotra Fifteen Stotra Sixteen Stotra Seventeen

- Advaitapaicakam - Atmasatkam - Upadesapancakam - Kasipaicakam - Kaupinapaicakam - Dvadasamanjarika - Dhanyastakam - Nirguigamdnasapuja - Ni vanamafj/ari - Para Puja - Pratah Smaranam - ManisOpaicakam - Vijninanauka - Satpadi - Harim Ide

ananda ciddnanda (six times) bhakti bhakti Cnanda, hrdi bhakti, hrdaya lhdaya dnanda (thrice), hrdaya ananda inanda (thrice) hrdi hrdaya bhakti (twice), ananda dnanda bhakti (five), hrd, hrdi, hrdaya (five), inanda (five)

Thus we can make no determination on authorship, on the above basis, for stotras six and seven, the Carpafapafnjarikd and the Daksindmuirtisto- tram. The situation with regard to those two stotras has been separately discussed in work to

be published. The first of these is not by Safikara, the second well may be.

It is our conclusion that this corpus as a whole does not correspond in style or content to the only undoubtedly authentic metrical work of gani-

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GUSSNER: Stylometric Study of Hymns Attributed to Sanikara

kara. The difference of word-frequency and meaning that my tables show make it very difficult to maintain the traditional view that Safikara wrote even these stotras that are most Vedantic in content. The Daksin&amurtistotram is the only exception among these works. To uphold the traditional view that Sankara wrote a great number of stotras one would have to show that ganikara uses the words bhakti, hrd, and ananda with the meanings they have in the stotra corpus. Even if it is possible to show this by drawing upon his prose work (a matter that I have not explored), the problem of word-frequencies and general style for his poetic work would still remain. To overcome this problem, one would have to educe some undoubtedly authentic work with word frequencies, use of adverbs, and so on, that con- formed to the stotra corpus and differed from the Upad. This seems highly unlikely, since the authenticity of any work would have to be established with reference to the Upad, unless external evidence was unimpeachable.

Further, it no longer seems possible to uphold the agnostic position that we will never know whether ganikara wrote these hymns. This position has often been defended on the grounds that there is no evidence, either positive or negative, on the matter. The result of this agnosticism has been that the tradition that Safkara wrote these hymns has stood. To the extent that this study is valid, there is now considerable negative evidence on the question. One who regards the question as undecided would now seem to bear the responsi- bility of advancing positive evidence of some type, even to reopen the question and reestablish a tenable agnostic position.

This study also opens the way to the study of other stotras ascribed to ganikara in terms of seeking to establish positive stylometric conform- ity with the Upad. The methods for meaningful comparison here developed can doubtless be ex- panded upon and the application improved in the future to shed light on the situation with regard to other works ascribed to Sanikaracarya.

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Article Contentsp.259p.260p.261p.262p.263p.264p.265p.266p.267

Issue Table of ContentsJournal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 96, No. 2, Apr. - Jun., 1976Front MatterSino-Tibetan: Another Look [pp.167-197]Classical Arabic Poetry between Folk and Oral Tradition [pp.198-212]The Ibn Sayyd Traditions and the Legend of al-Dajjl [pp.213-225]Segolate Nouns in Biblical and Other Aramaic Dialects [pp.226-235]The Concept of Maal in the Bible and the Ancient near East [pp.236-247]On the G Vedic Riddle of the Two Birds in the Fig Tree (RV 1.164.20-22), and the Discovery of the Vedic Speculative Symposium [pp.248-258]A Stylometric Study of the Authorship of Seventeen Sanskrit Hymns Attributed to akara [pp.259-267]Brief CommunicationsTseng Kuo-fan and Liu Chuan-ying [pp.268-272]Tummu and par(as)-eru. Note on Two Measures of Weight at Nuzi [p.273]A Second "Index Fossil" of Sanskrit Grammarians [pp.274-277]

Book Reviewsuntitled [pp.278-280]untitled [pp.280-283]untitled [pp.283-286]untitled [pp.286-287]untitled [pp.287-290]untitled [pp.290-292]untitled [pp.292-293]untitled [pp.293-294]untitled [pp.294-295]untitled [pp.295-296]untitled [pp.296-297]untitled [pp.297-298]untitled [pp.298-300]untitled [pp.300-302]untitled [pp.302-304]untitled [pp.304-306]untitled [p.306]untitled [pp.307-308]untitled [pp.308-309]untitled [pp.309-310]untitled [pp.310-313]untitled [pp.313-314]untitled [pp.314-316]untitled [pp.316-317]untitled [pp.317-318]untitled [pp.318-322]untitled [pp.322-324]untitled [pp.324-326]untitled [pp.326-327]untitled [pp.327-328]untitled [pp.328-329]untitled [pp.329-331]untitled [pp.331-334]untitled [pp.334-336]untitled [pp.336-337]untitled [pp.337-339]untitled [pp.339-340]untitled [pp.340-343]untitled [pp.343-345]untitled [pp.345-347]untitled [pp.347-348]untitled [pp.348-349]untitled [pp.349-350]untitled [pp.350-351]untitled [pp.351-353]untitled [pp.353-354]untitled [pp.354-356]

Proceedings of the Middle West Branch of the American Oriental Society Grand Rapids, Michigan, February, 1976Notes of the SocietyNotes of Other SocietiesBack Matter

Gussner_A Stylometric Study of the Authorship of Seventeen Sanskrit Hymns Attributed to Śaṅkara

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