twelfth or thirteenth.[291] But, indeed, without some such strange perversion of history, it is impossible to construct an argument for the authenticity of the _Gītā_ and the historicity of the _Mahābhārata_ that shall have even the semblance of reason. We note next that of all the books of the second class, Bunkim Chundra’s _Krishnacharitra_ is the only work that gives any independent criticism: all the rest, with the single exception of _Srikrishner Jivana O Dharma_, merely echo his arguments. Thus Bunkim Babu’s theory is the only one we need discuss. Now the whole critical structure of the _Krishnacharitra_ rests upon the passage on pages 41 and 42, where the date of Pānini is discussed. Pānini is pushed back to 1000 B. C.; and, the ‘original’ _Mahābhārata_ being earlier than Pānini, we are asked to believe that it was produced within a century or two of Kurukshetra, and that it is in consequence trustworthy historically. The whole argument thus rests on the date of Pānini. We translate this important passage:— “Goldstücker has proved that, when Pānini’s Sūtra was composed, Buddha had not arisen. In that case Pānini must belong to the sixth century B. C. But not only that, in his time the Brāhmanas, the Aranyakas, the Upanishads and the other parts of the Vedas had not been composed. Apart from the Rig, the Yajur, and the Sāma Vedas, nothing else existed. Asvalāyana, Sānkhāyana and the rest had not appeared. Max Müller says that the age in which the Brāhmanas were composed began about 1000 B. C. Dr. Martin Haug says that that was the end of the age, and that it began in the fourteenth century B. C. Therefore, if we say that Pānini must belong to the tenth or eleventh century B. C., we do not say too much.” Now the first remark we make on this extraordinary piece of criticism is this, that Goldstücker and Max Müller are most unfairly conjoined to support a date which both of them would have indignantly repudiated. For Müller’s date for Pānini is the fourth century B.C.,[292] and Goldstücker never proposed to push him further back than the sixth century; indeed all that he claims is that he has brought forward evidence which affords a strong _probability_ that Pānini preceded the origin of the Buddhistic creed.[293] Our next remark is that, though more than forty years have passed since Goldstücker’s book appeared,[294] he has convinced no one that the Brāhmanas and the Upanishads are posterior to Pānini’s grammar: opinions still differ as to Pānini’s precise date, but no scholar to-day puts him before the Brāhmanas.[295]