1871.] 
171 
The Alla Upanishad. 
a lost tradition to have been a source, be may prove whatever 
be pleases, for it is like appealing to a dead witness,” ( mri - 
tasdlcshika-vyavahdravachcha pralinas'dJchdmula Tva-kalpanaydm yasmai 
yadrochate sa tat pramani kurydt ). The risk of detection and 
exposure in such a course is, however, reduced to a minimum, 
and hence it has been adopted very frequently by medkeval and 
even modern Indian authors to establish the authenticity of parti¬ 
cular opinions and dogmas, and even of entire works. The in¬ 
numerable Tantras and Upa Puranas, which are now met with, owe 
their names solely to this cause, and the Pippalada sakha itself has 
been appealed to more than once for that purpose. Two or three 
centuries before the Muhammadan forger, a pious Yaishnava 
attributed to that school a composition on the divinity of the 
youthful Gopala, the Gopdla Tapani , which found in so distinguished 
a scholar as Jiva Gos'vami a commentator ; and several other apo¬ 
cryphal Upanishads are likewise affiliated to the same parentage. 
Manifest, however, as the spurious character of such attempts is 
to the literary critic, their success among Indian sectaries has 
been generally very great. In the case of the Muhammadan 
forger it was complete, and many otherwise sensible and well-read 
people were entirely misled by it. The late Sir Paja Padhakanta 
Bahadur was so far taken in as to introduce into his great lexicon 
the word Allah , as a Sanskrit vocable, and to quote this spurious 
work for his authority. Even now many pandits admit its authen¬ 
ticity, and are prepared to subscribe to the tenets inculcated in 
it, believing that it is only Vedantism in an obscure shape, due 
to the mystic character of the Yeda from which it proceeds. 
The MS. of the Allah Upanishad is, even for an Upanishad which 
class of works are generally short, of very limited extent, comprising 
only two pages of 6 lines each. The language is obscure, apparently 
so made with a view to imitate the Yedic style; but the imitation 
is neither happy, nor grammatically correct. Yedic words are 
freely used, but without any appreciation of their original import, 
and their relation to each other is but ill-governed by the rules 
of Panini. A plural verb has been twice used for a singular 
nominative, and the adjectives do not always correspond with their 
nouns. The collocation is throughout so defective that it is diffi- 
