Interpreting Vakyapadiya Historically

Author(s): Ashok Aklujkar
Publisher: Ashok Aklujkar
Catalog link: https://jainqq.org/explore/269648/1

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ASHOK AKLUJKAR
of the mancial supportan various stageshe American
INTERPRETING VĀKYAPADIYA 2.486
HISTORICALLY (PART 1)* 1.1 The verse I propose to discuss (parvatād āgamam labdhvā bhāsya-bījānusāribhiḥ| sa nīto bahu-sākhatvam candrācāryādibhiḥ punaḥ|/) is a part of the ten epilogue type verses found at the end of the Vākya-kāņda or second book of Bhartshari's Vākyapadīya or Trikāņdi.1
* (a) A part of this article was presented as a paper at the 188th meeting of the American Oriental Society held in Toronto in April 1978. The financial support necessary for gathering the relevant textual materials was given at various stages by the University of British Columbia, the Canada Council, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute.
(b) In referring to the Vakyapadīya/Trikāndi verses I have followed the enumeration in Rau 1977.
1 Eight of these verses are directly or indirectly relevant to the following discussion. They are given below for easy reference:
prāyeņa samkṣepa-rucin alpa-vidyā-parigrahān/ samprāpya vaiyākaraṇān samgrahe 'stam upāgate/481// krte 'tha patañjalinā gurunā tirtha-darśinā| sarveşām nyāya-bijānām mahābhāsye nibandhanel/482// alabdha-gādhe gāmbhiryad uttāna iva sauşthavāt) tasminn aksta-buddhinām naivādāsthita niscayaḥ||483|| vaiji-saubhava-haryakşaiḥ śuşka-tarkānusāribhiḥ/ ārşe viplāvite granthe samgraha-pratikañcuke|/484// yah patañjali-sisyebhyo bhraşto vyākaraṇāgamah/ kāle sa dākṣinātyeșu granthamätre vyavasthitaḥ//485// parvatād āgamam labdhvā bhāsya-bijānusāribhiḥ| sa nito bahu-sākhatvam candrācāryādibhiḥ punaḥ||486|| nyāya-prasthāna-mārgāms tān abhyasya svam ca darśanam/ pranito guruņāsmākam ayam agama-samgrahaḥ//487// vartmanām atra keşāmcid vastumātram udāhrtam/ kānde trtiye nyakşeņa bhavisyati vicāraņā||488//
in alpa orahe 'Starlinál....wel|482||

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I have argued elsewhere (Aklujkar 1978:9-26) that the ten verses were not written by Bhartṛhari but by a student of his. However, this does not diminish the historical importance of the verses, for they remain almost as ancient as they have been thought to be. Secondly, acceptance of my view on the authorship of the verses is not a presupposition underlying the points I wish to make in this article. As far as I can see, the observations I offer below are logically independent of the problem of authorship.
1.2 I should also clarify what I mean by a historical interpretation of 2.486. Such an interpretation is primarily an attempt to dissociate the verse from the interpretation, mythological and based on superstition, assigned to it in the Tika and echoed elsewhere.2 It is an exploration of the possibility of attributing a commonsensical and contextually defensible meaning to 2.486. Secondly, I do not wish to claim that such a meaning reflects historical events that it informs us regarding what actually took place. Although I shall write a portion of this article as if in my view the verse
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2 (a) The Vakya-kanda-Tikä published in the Benares Sanskrit Series (nos. 11, 19, 24 in 1887) is usually ascribed to Punya-rāja. However, as is argued in Aklujkar 1974, it could be from the pen of Helä-rāja. (b) As far as I am aware, it has not as yet been demonstrated that the Ţīkā comment on 2.486 is largely mythical in nature. I intend to analyze the comment as a myth in part 2 of this aticle (see fn. 5 below).
(c) Even those scholars working on Bhartṛhari who have referred to or reproduced the Tīkā comment on 2.486 have not noted that similar accounts are found in the Tibetan tradition and in the late Sanskrit epic poem Patanjali-carita.

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INTERPRETING VĀKYAPADĪYA 2.486 583 contains unquestionable history, this is not a matter of conviction to me. The value of 2.486 and the group to which it belongs lies primarily in informing us about what was viewed as history by a learned individual fifteen hundred years ago. It is as an ancient historical statement that the verses are important. Although because of their age they are likely to be closer to historical reality than our more recent sources and guesses, it is not imperative that we view them as giving us the historical truth. In other words, there is a need to separate our perspective from that of the author of the verses. 3
1.3 . A comprehensive historical interpretation of 2.486 should attempt to answer the following questions: (a) What was the nature of the activity referred to by āgamam labdhvā ? In other words, what was the manner of the acquisition of agama? (b) What was the source or location of the acquisition of agama ? How does one identify parvata? (c) What is meant by bhāsya-bija-s and how were they utilized ? (d) What is the precise meaning of bahu-śākhatvam nītaḥ? How exactly did Candrācārya and others make the āgama manybranched ?4 (e) Who are Candrācāryādi? Can we
3 Regrettably, such a separation is missing in the discussions of 481-90 that have so far appeared in print. Scholars have written as if an unalloyed piece of historical information regarding the Pāņinian grammatical tradition is to be found in these verses.
4 In a literal interpretation of 486 the component ādi in candrācāryādibhih must be connected with āgamam labh as well as bahu-sākhatvam ni; that is, the associates or followers of Candrācārya 'must be understood as agents in the act of acquisition and the act of making the dyākaranāgama many-branched. However, it is

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assign a personality to the designation Candrācārya ? My intention in the present article is to answer only the first question. The remaining questions must be left out for treatment in separate publications.5
2.1 Prior to addressing myself directly to question (a), I should draw attention to a grammatical-textual problem I have pointed out without offering a solution in Aklujkar 1978:23-4. How we answer question (a) will depend on our resolution of that problem. The construction āgamam labdhvā sa bahu-śākhatvam nītaḥ in 2.486 seems as strange to me as maņim labdhvā sa bahu-bhedatvam nitaḥ or vişavíkşam samvardhya sa bahukhandatvam nitah. Normally, the demonstrative pronoun sah should not be necessary, and there should be nominative forms in the place of maşim and dișa-orkşam;
possible that the author did not want us to interpret his remark with such grammatical exactitude; in his view Candrācārya could have been the lone agent of the act of acquiring and others could have joined or followed Candrācārya only in furthering the āgama. The same can be said about the parallel statement in Rāja-tarangini 1.176. In the Tibetan tradition Candra-gomin, who is a functional equivalent of Candrācārya, is not accompanied by anyone when he comes across the Mahābhāsya exposition.
5 See 'Interpreting Vākyapadiya 2.486 historically (part 2) to be published in Indological and Buddhist Studies in Honour of Professor 7. W. de Jong and Interpreting Vākyapadiya 2.486 historically (part 3)' forthcoming. The former will constitute a negative sequel to the present article in that it will demonstrate that the Țikā answer to question (a) is not historical and has features typical of myths. The latter will seek to answer question (b). My thoughts on questions (c)-(e) are far from reaching a publishable form.

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that is, the sentences should be: manir labdhva bahubhedatvam nitaḥ, visa-vrkṣaḥ samvardhya bahu-khaṇḍatoam nitaḥ, and agamo labdhva bahu-sakhatvam nītaḥ.6
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2.2 Now, there is no easy textual way of reducing agamam labdhva sa bahu-sakhatvam nitah to āgamo labdhvā bahu-sakhatvam nitaḥ. All known manuscripts, especially those which are most reliable in instances of divergence in reading, agree in reading agamam and in containing sah. Besides, saḥ is needed to refer to vyakaraṇāgama mentioned in verse 485. This leaves only one textual solution available to us: emendation of the reading agamam or parvatad āgamam. Such a course of action is especially inviting if one notes that the word agamam is not really necessary; vyākaraṇāgama has been referred to unambiguously in 485. Use of an unwarranted substantive hardly agrees with the meticulousness of expression evident in 2.481-90. Secondly, if the substantive agama were to be repeated at all, it would have been repeated most probably after employing an appropriate form of the demonstrative pronoun; that is, agamo vyavasthitaḥ tam agamam labdhvā... does not seem strange, but agamo vyavasthitaḥ| agamam labdhvā
Cf. Vamana, Kāvyālamkāra-sūtra-vṛtti 5.2.21 (p. 77-8 of the Nirnaya Sagara edition of 1953): anabhihite [Panini 2.3.1] ity atra sütre tin-kṛt-taddhita-samāsaiḥ [Varttika 5] iti parigaṇanam kṛtam. tasya prāyikatvān nipātenāpy abhihite karmani na karma-vibhaktir bhavati, yathā visa-vṛkso 'pi samvardhya svayam chettum asāmpratam [Kumārasambhava 2.55] iti. Also, Siddhantakaumudi on 2.3.1-2 in Kärakaprakarana 537. Note the construction rajñā sa mahipatiḥ nigrhya tulyavasthaḥ vyadhiyata in Raja-tarangini, 4.305.

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... does seem strange; the two sentences do not join smoothly in the latter case.?
2.3 The above considerations, however, do not seem so strong to me as to force an emendation on us; their strength extends only to making a prima facie case that the wording available to us may not be the original one. The argument they build up is essentially stylistic. That words are used in a measured, considered manner in verses 2.481-90 does not necessarily mean that their author will not repeat a substantive for the sake of the metre or for the sake of emphasizing some aspect.8 Similarly, the absence of a tam is a matter of stylistic sensitivity; it is an expression that would have made the reference of āgama more pointed, but it is not absolutely required by the context. Being aware of these counter-arguments and of at least one other plausible way of explaining the construction agamam labdhvā sa bahu-śākhatvam nītaḥ, I do not wish to propose that the text of 486a be emended.
2.4 If it is decided that the text as handed down in manuscripts should not be tampered with, then the grammatical problem seen in āgamam labdhvā sa
? One would get a similar feeling if someone decided to avoid using pronouns in constructing English sentences and repeated the related nouns whenever necessary. Why this happens is an interesting question, but it need not be answered here.
8 For example, the intention could be to say: 'one does not expect that a culturally less active area like a mountain would preserve knowledge that is lost elsewhere, but it is at a mountain that Candrācārya acquired the āgama which the successors of Patañjali had lost.'

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bahuśākhatvam nītaḥ must be solved by probing deeper into syntax. Two syntactic solutions are possible:
(a) One could assume that the author of 486 feels like referring to the vyākaraṇāgama by saḥ once again after he has referred to it by āgamam because an expression like bhāsyabījānusāribhiḥ actually intervenes and an expression like bhāsya-bijānusāribhiḥ candrācāryādibhiḥ mentally intervenes. A sentence like mārgam labdhvā śrāntcis trșitaiḥ kṣudhitai rāja-putraiḥ sa punar hāpitaḥ (“After having found the path, the exhausted, thirsty, and hungry princes lost it again') does not seem strange. Only when the expressions between mārgam labdhvā and saḥ are removed and the sentence is shortened to mārgam labdhvā sa hāpitaḥ do we get the feeling that some deviation from standard Sanskrit has taken place; we feel like asking, “If this is what the author has in mind, why did he not write labdho mārgaḥ punar hāpitaḥ or mārgam labdhvā te tam punar hāpitavantaḥ?'
(b) If one assumes that the reference of āgamam and saḥ is to different entities then agamam labdhvā sa bahu-śākhatvam nitah is not a strange or ungrammatical construction. For example, vajram labdhvā maņir bahubhedatvam nitaḥ and vişavykşam samvardhya amra-orkşo bahu-khandatvam nītaḥ are acceptable sentences.
2.5 The Țikā ascribed to Punya-rāja or Helārāja (see fn. 2 above) accepts the second possibility and does not seem to be aware of the first. It understands
9 The Tikā introduces and explains 486 as follows: atha kālāntarena candrācāryādibhir āgamam labdhvā tena copāya-bhūtena sakalāni bhāsyāvasthitani yāni nyāya-bijāni tāny anusrtya vyākaraṇāgamaḥ punar api sphitatām nita ity abhidhātum āha ... parvatāt tri-kūțaika-deśa-varti

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āgamam as referring to a mūla-bhūta vyākaraṇāgama and saḥ as referring to the vyākaraṇāgama that the students of Patañjali lost. According to it, what happened in the history of Pāņinian grammar was essentially this: Because of the peculiar style of the Mahābhäsya and because of the insensitive interpretations advanced by Vaiji and others, the successors of Patañjali lost the knowledge of what Patañjali actually wished to say and what Patañjali accepted as siddhānta. This knowledge was no longer a part of their living tradition of study and was preserved only in manuscripts among the Southerners. Candrācārya and others again gave it currency in a much developed form, once they came in possession of the mūla-bhūta dyākaraṇāgama. In other words, although the Țīkā seems hesistant and hazy, 10
tilingaika-deśad iti. tatra hy upala-tale rāvana-viracito mūla-bhūtavyākaranāgamas tişthati. kenacic ca brahma-rakşasäniya [sa?] candracārya-vasurāta-guru-prabhịtinām datta iti. taiḥ khalu yathāvad vyākaraṇasya sva-rūpam tata upalabhya, satatam ca śisyāņām vyākhyāya [vyākaraņāgamo?] bahu-śākhitvam nito vistāram prāpita ity anuśtūyate.
10 Note that in the Țikā comment āgamal müla-bhūta-vyākaranagama and vyākaraṇāgama are nowhere placed near each other in such a manner as to make their distinction readily intelligible. In the passage introducing 486, one cannot immediately determine whether the āgama referred to by agamam labdhvā tena copāya-bhūtena is the same as the vyākaraṇāgama referred to by vyākaraṇāgamaḥ punar api sphitatām nitah, and thus identical with the wyākaranāgama spoken of in verse 485. It is also not clear if that āgama is a means (upāya) with respect to following the intimations in the Mahābhasya (bhasyavasthitāni yāni nyāya-bijāni tāny anusītya) or with respect to making the obscure vyākaraṇāgama easily noticeable (vyākaraṇāgamah punar api sphitatām nitaḥ). As for the passage following the text of 486 in the Țikā, there seems to have been a studied effort not to state explicitly the object of satatam ca śisyānām vyākhyāya bahuśākhitvam nitaḥ and thus to play down the presence of vyākaranāgamaḥ and saḥ in verses 485 and 486.

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it probably isualizes the relevant happenings as follows: Candrācārya and others got hold of the essential, most fundamental, body of Vaiyākaraņa doctrines. They studied the intimations in the Mahābhāsya on the background of these doctrines; they used the principles implicit in Patañjali's statements to provide flesh to the skeleton they had received. This activity enabled them to make current once again a multifaceted, robust tradition of Vaiyākaraņa views.
2.6 There are several problems associated with the reconstruction of events given in the Țikā. First of all, no author is likely to use a very general word like āgama for a very specific müla-bhūta vyākaraṇāgama without adding the necessary qualifications. Such an unqualified use is especially unlikely when the word āgama could be mistaken as referring to the general vyākaraṇāgama or the Mahābhāsya-related vyākaraṇāgama (see fn. 18 below) mentioned in the immediately preceding verse. Besides, the verses 481-90 have been written with such a clear awareness of sequence that it seems highly improbable that their author would suddenly switch the reference of agama from vyākaraṇāgama to mūlu-bhūta vyākaraṇāgama. If he had such a switch in mind he would have in all likelihood written a verse between present 485 and 486 making the transition possible. As matters stand, even the Tikā does give any hint of a verse missing in between. Moreover, nowhere else in Sanskrit literature, as far as I am aware, is the notion of an eternal but ordinarily inaccessible müla-bhūta vyākaranāgama corroborated. To be noted

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in this connection is also the fact that the Țikā explanation does not clarify what the relation of the activities of Candrācārya and others was to the vyākaraṇāgamagranthall preserved among the Southerners. Did Candrācārya and others get hold of this grantha or was the furthering of vyākaraṇāgama achieved by them independently of the grantha-achieved only through the mūlabhūta vyukaraṇāgama and study of the Mahābhāsya ? It is obviously the first alternative that is more likely to have been intended by the author of 486, for if Candrācārya and others are not said to have known the grantha, the mention of grantha in verse 485 becomes vacuous, and Candrācārya and others cannot be said to have made the vyākaraṇāgama many-branched; they cannot make many-branched something they do not possess, and verse 485 tells us that vyäkaranā gama was preserved only in grantha form (note grantha-mātre). But if Candrācārya and others did get hold of the grantha and the vyākaranāgama contained in it, how do we get a statement to that effect from 486a, should we decide to follow the Țikā explanation ? Under that explanation, once 486a is made to state that Candrācārya and others got hold of the mūla-bhūta vyākaranāgama we have no space to accommodate a statement to the effect that Candrācārya and others got hold of the vyākaranāgama
11 I retain the expression grantha in order to be able to preserve the ambiguity of the original; verse 485 does not specify whether the vyākaraṇāgama was preserved in one grantha (manuscript, composition, written form of a work, manuscript bundle) or several grantha-s.

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that the successors of Patañjali had lost.12 Thus, the Țīkā explanation is untenable for more than one reason.13
2.7 The outcome of the discussion so far is that, n the present state of our resources, alternative (a) mentioned in 2.4 above is the best solution available. True, it implies acceptance of a certain laxity in the composition of 486, with part of that laxity attributable to intervening expressions. However, it does not at
hannot to abbes
12 It may be said by way of objection that I am putting too specific an interpretation on the word müla-bhūta—that what the author of the Țikā means is nothing more than vyākaranāgama; he characterizes it as müla-bhūta because it was vital to the understanding of the Mahābhāsya and the doctrines of the Vaiyakaraņa-s; his intention is not to set müla-bhūta vyākaranāgama apart from vyākaranāgama (see fn. 10 above). In other words, mūlabhūta is an adjective that describes, not one that distinguishes. However, it seems extremely unlikely to me that müla-bhūta is intended as a simple descriptive, emphatic, adjective. The author of the summary verses appearing at the end of the Țikā manuscripts, who was most probably a junior contemporary of, if not identical with, the author of the Țikā (Aklujkar 1974:181-4), certainly did not take it that way. The relevant verse in his composition is: bhrastasyāmnāya-särasya vaiyākaraña-gāminaḥ| mūla-bhūtam avāpyātha parvatād āgamam svayam/l. Here the vaiyākarana-gāmin amnāyasāra (that is, the vyākaraṇāgama) is clearly distinguished from the mūla-bhūta āgama. Thus, the Țikā words have been understood as I understand them almost from the time of its author. Secondly, if vyākaranāgama and müla-bhūta vyākaraṇāgama are deemed identical, the Tikā must be understood as implying that the successors of Patañjali mentioned in 485 were initially in possession of a rāvanaviracita āgama and that grantha in 485 means inscribed on stone (upala-tala)'. However, these implications are not at all supported by the Țikā comment on 485.
13 Note also that there is no suggestion of two āgama-s in the Rāja-tarangiņi (1.176) passage reminiscent of 486: candråcāryādibhir labdhvādeśam [v. 1. labdhvā deśāt] tasmāt tadāgamam [read sahāgamam?]/ pravartitam mahā-bhāsyam spam ca vyākaranam kịtam/).

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least force us into any intellectual acrobatics or assumption of unexpressed distinctions. Besides, although I have so far been able to find only one, 14 many sentences showing the influence of intervening expressions on constructions of the type āgamo labdhvā bahu-śākhatvam nitaḥ may be found in Sanskrit literature. If they are found, then the only problem with the wording of 486 will be the use of the word āgama when it could have been contextually understood. As pointed out in 2.3 above, this is hardly a serious problem. The greatest merit of solution (a), however, is that it leaves room for answering question (a) in 1.2 above in a commonsensical way.
3.1 Given the background that verses 481-485 provide and the result (bahu-śākhatvam nītaḥ) that 486 speaks of, what could Candrācārya and others be understood as having done or gone through? It is quite clear that in their days the Mahābhāsya-related vyākaraņāgama had ceased to be a true āgama and was, at least according to the text we have, preserved only in a remote
14 This is Samkara, Tattvopadeśa verse 66 (Minor Works of Sri Samkarācārya, Poona Oriental Series No. 8, ed. H.R. Bhagavat, 2nd edn., 1952, p. 24): advayānanda-rūpāt tvām pracyāvyātīva dhūrtakaiḥ| dūra-nito 'si dehesu samsārāranya-bhūmişull Having dislodged you thoroughly (ativa) from a form consisting of bliss of non-duality, the rogues have led you far in [the region of] bodies, the jungle land of transmigration. Here the construction dhürtakais tvām pracyāvya [tvam] dūra-nito 'si is similar to candrācāryādibhir āgamam labdhvā sa bahu-sākhatvam nitaḥ, unless, of course, the reading tdām can be proved to be a corruption of tvam. As an instance of the need felt that a pronoun be used to refer to an intervened subject or object, note Patañjali on Pratyāhāra-sutra 1 (Kielhorn's cdn., vol. I, p. 18): loka rși-sahastam ekām kapilám ekaikaśaḥ sahasrakstvo dattvā tayā sarve te sahasra-dakşiņāḥ sampannāḥ.
dehest from a form the regiontruction dhürlening

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or relatively remote written source or body of sources. Therefore, the first possibility is that Candracārya and others would try to make the source or sources not so remote, that is, to make the Southern grantha available in the North. The second possibility is that they would try to collect the scattered written record; a reconstruction of the agama would have been impossible without a systematic exploration of the sources in which it that was preserved. The third possibility is Candrācārya and others would try to interpret what they found in the South.15
3.2 Of these three possibilities-reintroduction of manuscripts in the North, piecing together of the āgama preserved in the Southern sources, and making sense of the relevant enlightening works in the South, the first possibility is not likely to have been intended for expression in 486a. The words bhasya-bījānusāribhiḥ and bahu-śākhatvam nitaḥ indicate that the initial achivement registered by Candracārya and others is likely to be intellectual and unlikely to be a simple transcription of manuscripts. Besides, if Candrācārya and others had been responsible for giving wider currency to a work or body of works, details such as title, etc. of that work
15 Theoretically, this interpretation could have been two-fold: (a) reading the Southern record by mastering its script, and (b) making sense of the sentences or remarks seen in the record. The first type of interpretation, however, is not likely to be meant here. Since Sanskrit manuscripts were commonly written in the local scripts, decipherment was probably not considered to be such a rare achievement as to deserve a special mention. Secondly, the accompanying qualification bhasya-bijānusāribhiḥ indicates that the achievement of Candracārya and others was interpretative in the sense of understanding, comprehension, or making sense.
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or body of works would probably have been provided. Nor does the first possibility agree with the general and primary sense of agama (traditionally handed down knowledge' as explained in Aklujkar 1971:169-70).
3.3 Thus, if we are to follow the indications that 485 and 486 give, the initial achievement of Candracārya and others can be narrowed down to (a) culling of the vyākaraṇāgama bearing on the Mahābhāṣya from various works preserved in the South and (b) interpretation of the works surviving in the South that contained information crucial to a proper understanding of the Mahābhāṣya which had ceased to be properly studied. Now, these two activities are mutually complementary in practice. Mere collection of relevant passages or works is useless without interpretation, and no satisfactory interpretation of texts which have gone out of currency is possible unless passages of similar . or related import are put near each other. Therefore, what Candrācārya and his associates or successors did was probably both collation and exegesis.
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3.4 I thus understand recovery of as much vyakaraṇāgama as was available in a book-bound, moribund form to be the nature of the activity referred to by āgamam labdhvā. I do not think that the agama referred to in this phrase is different from the vyākaraṇāgama mentioned in 485 or is one, specific, work. I view Candrācārya and others as having in their possession the Mahābhāṣyale and some other texts of the Pāṇinian
16 Attempts have been made, most notably by Albrecht Weber and S. D. Joshi, to infer from verses 481-90 that the text of

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INTERPRETING VĀKYAPADĪYA 2.486 595 system (including the Aştādhyāyīl? and vārttika) but no reliable interpretation of the Mahābhāsya18 and no precise knowledge of what the Mahābhāsya had implicitly taken from the Samgraha and related works. Generally, it was the pre-Patañjali scholarship in theories about language, grammar, and related topics and the knowledge of the influence of that scholarship on Patañjali's own thinking that had become elusive by the time of Candrācārya and his associates. The inability of their predecessors to cope with a work that demanded knowledge of several branches of learning and the prevalence of Mahābhāsya interpretations based on uninformed guess-work (suşka tarka; see Aklujkar 1978: 18; Cardona 1978: 95-6) authored by Vaiji, Saubhava, the Mahābhāsya survived precariously before Candräcārya established it again. Kielhorn (1876) and Cardona (1978) have pointed out that the verses do not support any such inference.
17 Remarks by Thieme (1956: 19 fn. 45-6) and Cardona (1978: 97, lines 6-10) leave the impression that in their view the understanding and use of the Astādhyāyi had suffered a decline before Candrācārya recovered the agama. As indicated in Aklujkar 1978:16-9, the evidence before us does not warrant this conclusion. Although a Mahābhāsya-related agama would include at least some knowledge contained in or inspired by the Aştādhyāyi and although improper understanding of the Mahabhāsya may in some cases result in an improper understanding of the Astādhyāyi, we have no indications in the available evidence that the Astādhyāyi as such was eclipsed either as a body of knowledge or as a generally accessible text.
18 It should be borne in mind that bhraştah in 485b is an attributive (qualifying or delimiting) adjective, not a predicate adjective. The author's intention is not to assert loss of the entire vyākaraṇāgama or the entire Pāṇinian grammatical tradition, but to speak of the lost portion of the vyākaranāgama. That this vyākaranāgama is one which has a bearing on the Mahābhāsya is something we know from the context (patañjalinā, mahābhāsye, patañjali-sisyebhyah).

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and Haryakşa had deprived them of information necessary for a proper understanding of the Mahābhäsya (not necessarily of the Astādhyāyī; see Aklujkar 1978: 18-9). It is this information they must have tried to get, and their success in getting it or a significant part of it must constitute the āgama-lābha. Since they could not have got the information unless they searched for pre-Patañjali works, works incorporating contents of pre-Patañjali works, and works directly (as commentaries) or indirectly relevant in the study of the Mahābhāsya, and studied whatever materials became available to them, āgama-lābha amounts to search and understanding of nearly-lost relevant works and fragments thereof.19
19 (a) If müla-bhūta in the Tikā explanation (fn. 9) is taken as a simple descriptive or emphatic adjective (fns. 10, 12 and 13), my interpretation may be said to agree with the Țikā interpretation in spirit, although certainly not in details. Both the interpretations would then converge to the extent of describing the recovered āgama as fundamental, as basic, to the understanding of the Pāņinian tradition in general and of the Mahābhāsya in particular, as one having general relevance as well as immediate specific application. The details of the Țikā explanation I would eschew would then be upala-tale, rāvana-viracitaḥ, and brahma-raksasānīya dattah.
(b) My interpretation agrees with Kielhorn's (1876:245) in that he too attempts (although implicitly) to divest verse 486 of the supernatural elements associated with it. We differ in our understanding of what Candrācārya and others discovered in the South. According to Kielhorn, the discovered matter was written ... commentaries which gave the traditional interpretation [of the Mahābhāsya'. I find this interpretation too specific to be reconciled with the primary sense of agama and the drift of 481-7. The author of 481-7 is evidently concerned with some knowledge which was common to the Samgraha and the Mahābhāsya, which could be used for understanding or in conjunction with) the principles implicit in the Mahābhāsya (note bhāsya-bijānusäribhiḥ), and

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3.5 Since I was so far concerned with discussing the most probable interpretation of only āgamam labdhvā, I have ignored the presence of the word parvatāt and have used expressions that leave room for the inference that Candrācārya and others acquired the āgama portions at a number of distant places in the South. Hence it needs to be clarified that this inference is not an unavoidable aspect of my exposition of agamam labdhvā. What is necessary if my interpretation is to stand is that Candrācārya and his associates be thought of as having visited a number of places in the South and as having made as thorough an effort as was possible in the then prevailing conditions; it is not necessary that they be thought of as having acquired the āgama at a number of places removed from each other. Therefore, the word parvatāt which indicates that the acquisition of agama took place in one region or took place mostly in one region does not conflict with my interpretation. It merely implies that even the written sources for the āgama had become scarce and were not found, as far as the search by Candrācārya and others was concerned, outside a region identifiable as parvata.
which had the potential for development into a variety of views or principles (note bahu-Bakhatvam nitaḥ ... nyāya-prasthāna-mārgāms tān). Such knowledge could be gathered from the commentaries on the Mahābhāsya, but it need not be viewed as exclusively available in them. Besides, if the uncertainty of interpretation evident in Bhartshari's Mahābhāsya-ţikā is any indication, a definite or mostly definite traditional interpretation such as the one commentaries would provide does not seem to have been available in Bhartshari's time. It is, therefore, unlikely to have been acquired by Candrācārya who does not seem to be far removed from Bhartshari in time.

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: 3,6 I prefer the interpretation given in the last five paragraphs to the one found in the Țikā for a number of reasons:
(a) It arises out of and agrees with the context of 486. According to it, Candrācārya and his followers carry out what we would expect them to carry out in the situation described in 481-5.
(b) It appeals to no supernatural event or person.
(c) It does not necessitate the assumption of an unsubstantiated, permanent but almost inaccessible, āgama.
(d) We are not required to admit a sudden shift in the use of the word āgama-from vyākaraṇāgama to mūlabhūta vyākaraṇāgama or from 'knowledge handed down in a tradition' to 'a specific text'.
(e) Conflict with the Rāja-tarangini passage echoing 486 (see fn. 13 above) is avoided. That passage seems to speak of an āgama whose immediate usefulness was in bringing the Mahābhāsya into academic currency, in making the Mahābhāsya a respectable and hence attractive text for serious students. My interpretation presupposes precisely such an agama.
(f) The nature of the āgama that Candrācārya and others managed to salvage should be reflected in the Vākyapadīya|Trikāņdī, for as verse 487 tells us, the Vākyapadīya/Trikāņdi is based on Bhartshari's20 own view as well as the many-branched āgama or nyāya-prasthāna-mārga-s that Candrācārya and others succeeded in developing after they got the āgama. Now, even a rapid reading of Bhartshari's
20 Or Vasurāta's, if the Țikā explanation is followed.
h

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work will bring home the fact that the agama it contains is almost always related to the Mahābhāsya. More often than not the pattern is one of stating some theses in the area of language and grammar and then mentioning or discussing some Mahābhāsya statements that could be associated with those theses. This pattern is particularly obvious in the third ķāņda but is not missing in the first two kāņda-s particularly in the Vștti portion.21 Traditional scholars have not been oblivious to it.22 Thus, there can be no doubt that āgama as it related to the Mahābhāsya was something that Bhartshari valued greatly. The interpretation I have proposed agrees with this observation, as it does not rest on the notion of an āgama distantly or indirectly related to the Mahābhāsya.
(g) We know it as a fact, especially after the discovery of Kautilya's Artha-śāstra and the Bhāsa plays, that many Sanskrit works which would throw a flood of light on dark periods and serve to link later works to earlier works survived in manuscript form in the South long after they ceased to be available in the North. This was but natural in view of the relatively
21 Bhartshari's commentary to the Mahābhāsya retains the thrust of this pattern, but naturally, since it must follow the order of Mahābhāsya statements, reverses the sequence of the constituents of the pattern; wherever the Mahābhāsya statements can be related to the general theses of the Vaiyākaraṇa-s it cites or utilizes those general theses.
22 In concluding the Prakirna-prakāśa, Helā-rāja observes : sūkti-sriyah ... etāḥ ... harer bhāsyābdhi-piyūṣa-cchatācchurita-vigrahāḥ. One of the introductory' verses of Tārānātha Tarka-väcaspati's Sabdārtha-ratna is as follows: mahābhāsyārtha-tātparya-jñāpikāḥ kārikāḥ svayam krtvā vākyapadiyākhyam nibandham kştavān harih/l.

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greater freedom the South enjoyed from agression, the more durable writing material it abundantly had, the financial support its scholars received, and the tradition it created of bestowing filial care on manuscripts. Distant regions tend to preserve older language forms as well as works. Hence an interpretation of 486a which mainly argues that the situation concerning Sanskrit works was essentially the same in the days of Candrācārya as we have witnessed it to be in the twentieth century should not come as a surprise.
3.7 To sum up, just as we need to distinguish our perspective from that of the author of 486 (1.2 above), we should distinguish the Įikā author's perspective from that of the author of 486. The Țikā interpretation, particularly because of its twofold understanding of āgama, is not the one we should view as intended in parvatād āgamam labdhvā. The supernatural element in it may go back to the author of 481-90, for the possibility of that author having believed that Candrācārya and others were guided to the lost vyākaraṇāgama through some extraordinary encounter cannot be logically ruled out. However, we can be certain that the possibility is not expressed in 486 and that, for this reason, it should be treated as non-existent. It seems more than likely that in the days of Bhartshari and his disciples the story of Candrācārya's acquisition of the agama was a simple tale of intelligent guesses and determined search, in which the only miracle was that Candrācārya succeeded in the face of overwhelming odds. The simple tale seems to have been gradually mythologized

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INTERPRETING VAKYAPADIYA 2.468 601 in the Vaiyakarana tradition in the following period of five or more centuries. BIBLIOGRAPHY Aklujkar, Ashok. 1971. Nakamura on Bhartshari Indo: Iranian Journal 13: 161-75. -1974. The authorship of the Vakya-kanda-tika. Charu Deva Shastri Felicitation Volume, pp. 165-88. New Delhi. -1978. The concluding verses of Bhartshari's Vakyakanda. Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Diamond Jubilee Volume, pp. 9-26. Cardona, George. 1978. Still again on the history of the Mahabhasya. Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Diamond Jubilee Volume, .. pp. 79-99. Kielhorn, Franz. 1876. On the Mahabhasya. Indian Antiquary 5:241-51. Reprinted in Franz Kielhorn Kleine-Schriften, ed. by Wilhelm Rau, Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1969. Rau, Wilhelm. 1977. (Ed.) Bhartshari's Vakyapadiya (mula-karikas). Monograph Series of the Deutsche Morgenlandische Gesellschaft, no. 42, 4. Wies baden: Franz Steiner Verlag. Thieme, Paul. 1956. Panini and the Paniniyas. Journal of the American Oriental Society 76: 1-23. Reprinted in Paul Thieine Kleine Schriften, vol. 2, pp. 573-95, Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1971.