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
Published by: American Oriental Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/599828
Accessed: 23-04-2015 14:46 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/
info/about/policies/terms.jsp
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content
in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.
For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

American Oriental Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of the American
Oriental Society.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 193.198.212.4 on Thu, 23 Apr 2015 14:46:13 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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.

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,

THIS PAPER SUMMARIZES a doctoral dissertation

on a corpus of advaitic stotras (hymns of praise)
ascribed to the great Veddntin, Safitraditionally
so dominates the Hindu
kara, whose non-dualism
renaissance of our time.1 My method has been to
establish a reliable text for these works by collating various manuscript readings and then comand word meanings
in
paring word-frequencies
this corpus of stotras with those in the Upadesasahasri (hereafter
Upad), the only verse work by
Safikara whose authenticity
is well established.2

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:
2
X2 Z (observed number- expected number

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'sauthentic stotras,
if they exist, among these works. The titles as given by
Bhagavat are Advaitapaicakam, Atmasatkam, UpadeSapaficakam, Kaglpaficakam, Kaupinapaficakam, Carpatapafijarikistotram, Daksinfamrtistotram, Dvadagapanjarikfstotram, Dhanyastakam, Nirgunamanasapuja, Nirvanamafijarl, 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 Bhaskara'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-

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...
259

This content downloaded from 193.198.212.4 on Thu, 23 Apr 2015 14:46:13 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

260

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 comparable 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-selection; (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, manual). Among our stotras, the Harim Ide, Advaitapaiicakam, and UpadeSapaicakam have been so

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 maturity. 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, somehow 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
When the population of potential authors is small, the
be due to a difference of author rather than any
probability of obtaining significant results from even a
of these other factors. And such is the case with
simple statistical test is quite great." Rebecca Posner, this material: the differences in the use of adverbs
"Use and Abuse of Stylistic Statistics," in Archivum and conjunctions is so great that the
probability
Linguisticum, Vol. 15 (June 1963), p. 113. Stephen of these variations occurring by chance in the work
Ullman, a critic of the statistical approach in stylistics
of one author is less than one in a thousand (see
concedes that, "There are at least three aspects of style
Table 2).
study which can derive very real benefit from numerical
Finally there is the question of the adequacy of
criteria...
it may help us establish authorship ... it
the sample. Two matters are relevant here: in the
may throw light on the unity of poems ... and determine first place, the Chi square formula is specifically
the chronologyof writings by the same author." Stephen designed to work with as few as five
expected
Ullman, Language and Style (Oxford: Basil Blackwell,
instances. In most cases we have many times
1964), pp. 119-20.
that number and in no case less than twelve. In
5 Kathe Marschner, Zur Verfasserfragedes dem San- the second
place, a word is frequent in the vocabkaracdryazugeschriebenenBrhaddranyakopanisad-Bhasya ulary of a Sanskrit author if it occurs more than
(typescript; Berlin: Alfred Lindner Verlag, 1933).
once in a hundred lines in verse composition. In

This content downloaded from 193.198.212.4 on Thu, 23 Apr 2015 14:46:13 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

GUSSNER: Stylometric Study of Hymns Attributed to Sankara

261

TABLE 1
FREQUENCY

OF SELECTED WORDS IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA

Single or
First in a

Second or
Later in

Word

Compound

Compound

Total
Occurrences

Frequency

sarvam
karma
aham

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

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

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

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

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

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
It will show, I think, that words one
Rahasya.
feels are very common in the Gitd are really not
that common.
for inAvyaktam (unmanifested),

Per Line

stance, seems common and is certainly conceptually 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

This content downloaded from 193.198.212.4 on Thu, 23 Apr 2015 14:46:13 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Journal of the American Oriental Society 96.2 (1976)

262

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 analogies comparing the pure Self to the sky twentyeight 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
AND HAVING AN EXPECTED FREQUENCY ABOVE FIVE AVERAGED
Upad
Occurrences

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

24
1
21
35
113
60
48
18
31
29
46
1
8
66
99
26
43
15
2

Per
Line
1/65
1/1360
1/65
1/36
1/12
1/23
1/28
1/75
1/44
1/46
1/30
1/1360
1/171
1/21
1/14
1/55
1/32
1/91
1/680

Stotra
Occurrences

Per
Line

0
25

0/512
1/20

2
4

1/256
1/138

1/102

1/64

Chi

3
0
4
0
34

1/170
0/512
1/138
0/512
1/15

14

1/36

10
13

1/52
1/39

4
0
7

1/128
0/512
1/73

50

1/10

11

1/46

i 4djusted

Square
Score

Level of
Significance

00.00
66.00
5.30
10.60
13.35
21.20
7.95
00.00
10.56
00.00
90.10
37.00
26.50
34.45
10.60
00.00
18.55
132.50
29.05

21.04
60.12
8.50
13.04
78.90
15.60
27.00
16.06
9.60
27.04
13.60
32.00
8.80
9.80
68.00
39.40
8.80
46.00
21.80

.001
.001
.010
.001
.001
.001
.001
.001
.010
.001
.001
.001
.010
.010
.001
.001
.010
.001
.001

Stotra

Text Sources: for the Upad, Jagad5nanda, A Thousand Teeachings (Madras: Ramakrishna
Math, 1970); for the Vedanta Stotras, Robert Gussner, colla Ltedtext, Ph. D. Thesis, 1973.

This content downloaded from 193.198.212.4 on Thu, 23 Apr 2015 14:46:13 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

ORK

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 fiftyseven in the other. The word "dhi" divides twentysix to twenty-three. The word "jnianam" divides
thirty-four against thirty-two. And a great many
other words show almost perfect internal consistency.
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 (2213) and brahman (30-16). The greatest internal

263

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 specialization 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-

This content downloaded from 193.198.212.4 on Thu, 23 Apr 2015 14:46:13 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

264

Journal of the American Oriental Society 96.2 (1976)

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.
THE

CONTENT

COMPARISON

OF

THE

STOTRAS

AND

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 undivided" but these are insignificant.
In the one significant case (16:67) it says, sraddhdbhakti puraskrtya hitvu sarvam anarjavam vetattuvrthe vyisasyabhimatau
tathd.
dintasyaiva
"Possessing faith and devotion, having renounced
all crookedness, one should have a firm understanding of the meaning of the principles of Vedanta, 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 conviction. 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
bhaktdisis 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 category. 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 devovotion, 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 nijahrdayastham devam). In 9:5 and 13:1 one also perceives something in the heart. Reality often is
described as vibrating in the heart. In 10:1 the

This content downloaded from 193.198.212.4 on Thu, 23 Apr 2015 14:46:13 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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 Upanisads, 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 allknowing. 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 blissful; 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 pikavadayah/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 extraordinarily long, and he gives a perfunctory ex-

265

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 acquired 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 Brhadaranyakopanisadbhdsyam, acknowledges that brahma is bliss,
even while he argues that one should not say that
brahma has bliss as it is found in relative existencethat 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. Certainly 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 wordfrequency, meaning, and intentionality between
the stotras and the Upad.
We can now summarize the situation with regard
to these three terms and offer further generalizations. 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.

This content downloaded from 193.198.212.4 on Thu, 23 Apr 2015 14:46:13 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

266

Journal of the American Oriental Society 96.2 (1976)

perception in the heart can reveal the background

Reality. The inner experience is prominently one
of bliss. And experience itself is a larger consideration 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 attending 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 circumstances 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 particularly 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 reassuring.
We can conclude by using the three wordsshow which stotras,
bhakti, hrd, and dnanda-to
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.

- Advaitapaicakam
Stotra One
- Atmasatkam
Stotra Two
- Upadesapancakam
Stotra Three
- Kasipaicakam
Stotra Four
- Kaupinapaicakam
Stotra Five
- Dvadasamanjarika
Stotra Eight
- Dhanyastakam
Stotra Nine
- Nirguigamdnasapuja
Stotra Ten
- Ni vanamafj/ari
Stotra Eleven
- Para Puja
Stotra Twelve
Stotra Thirteen - Pratah Smaranam
Stotra Fourteen - ManisOpaicakam
- Vijninanauka
Stotra Fifteen
Stotra Sixteen - Satpadi
Stotra Seventeen - Harim Ide

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

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)

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-

This content downloaded from 193.198.212.4 on Thu, 23 Apr 2015 14:46:13 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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 conformed 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.

267

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 responsibility 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 conformity with the Upad. The methods for meaningful
comparison here developed can doubtless be expanded upon and the application improved in the
future to shed light on the situation with regard
to other works ascribed to Sanikaracarya.

This content downloaded from 193.198.212.4 on Thu, 23 Apr 2015 14:46:13 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions