meanings given to the same words are indicative of its patchwork origin, which again would help to explain its philosophical inconsistencies.  It was probably composed, as it stands, before there was any formal Ved[=a]nta system; and in its original shape without doubt it precedes the formal S[=a]nkhya; though both philosophies existed long before they were systematized or reduced to Sutra form.  One has not to imagine them as systems originally distinct and opposed.  They rather grew out of a gradual intensification of the opposition involved in the conception of Prakriti (nature) and M[=a]y[=a] (illusion), some regarding these as identical, others insisting that the latter was not sufficient to explain nature.  The first philosophy (and philosophical religion) concerned itself less with the relation of matter to mind (in modern parlance) than with the relation of the individual self (spirit) to the Supreme Spirit.  Different explanations of the relation of matter to this Supreme Spirit were long held tentatively by philosophers, who would probably have said that either the S[=a]nkhya or Ved[=a]nta might be true, but that this was not the chief question.  Later came the differentiation of the schools, based mainly on a question that was at first one of secondary importance.  In another part of the epic Krishna himself is represented as the victim of ‘illusion’ (iii. 21. 30) on the field of battle.

The doctrine of the Bhagavad G[=i]t[=a], the Divine Song, is by no means isolated.  It is found in many other passages of the epic, besides being imitated in the Anug[=i]t[=a] of the pseudo-epic.  To one of these passages it is worth while to turn, because of the form in which this wisdom is enunciated.  The passage immediately following this teaching is also of great interest.  Of the few Vedic deities that receive hymnal homage chief is the sun, or, in his other form, Agni.  The special form of Agni has been spoken of above.  He is identified with the All in some late passages, and gives aid to his followers, although not in battle.  It will have been noticed in the Divine Song that Vishnu asserts that the Song was proclaimed to the sun, who in turn delivers it through Manu to the king-seers, the sun being especially the kingly god.[15] In the third book there is an hymn to the sun, in which this god is addressed almost in the terms of the Divine Song, and immediately preceding is the doctrine just alluded to.  After the explanation is given that re-birth affects creatures and causes them to be born in earth, air, or water, the changes of metempsychosis here including the vegetable world as well as the animal and divine worlds,[16] the very essence of the Divine Song is given as “Vedic word,” viz., kuru karma tyajeti ca, “Perform and quit acts,” i.e., do what you ought to do, but without regard to the reward of action (iii. 2. 72, 74).  There is an eightfold path of duty, as in Buddhism, but here it consists in sacrifice,