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145 relating to the subject are comprised therein, when, in fact, the most important of them are left out of consideration, as will be shown hereafter. No arguments are to be found in support of the date assigned to Sankara in the other portions of Mr. Barth's book, but there are few isolated passages which may be taken either as inferences from the statement in question or arguments in its support, which it will be necessary to examine in this connection.

Mr. Barth has discovered some connection between the appearance of Sankara in India and the commencement of the persecution of the Buddhists which he seems to place in the 7th and 8th centuries. In page 89 of his book he speaks of "the great reaction on the offensive against Buddhism which was begun in the Deccan in the 7th and 8th centuries by the schools of Kumarila and Sankara"; and in page 135, he states that the "disciples of Kumarila and Sankara organized into military bands, constituted themselves the rabid defenders of orthodoxy". The force of these statements is, however, considerably weakened by the author's observations on pages 89 and 134 regarding the absence of any traces of Buddhist persecution by Sankara in the authentic documents hitherto examined and the absurdity of legends which represent him as exterminating Buddhists from the Himalaya to Cape Comorin.

The association of Sankara with Kumarila in the passages above cited is ridiculous. It is well-known to almost every Hindu that the followers of Purva Mimamsa (Kumarila commented on the Sutras) were the greatest and the bitterest opponents of Sankara and his doctrine, and Mr. Barth seems to be altogether ignorant of the nature of Kumarila's views and Purva Mimamsa and the scope and aim of Sankara's Vedantic philosophy. It is impossible to say what evidence the another has for asserting that Lhe great reaction against the Buddhists commenced in the 7th and 8th centuries and that the Sankara was instrumental in originating it. There are some passages in his book which tend to show that this 19