Upanisads And Grammar On Meaning Of Anuvyakhyana

SR No.: 269448
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Johannes Bronkhorst
Publisher: Johannes Bronkhorst
Total Pages: 7
Language: English
Classification: Article
File Size: 817 KB

Page 3

190
Johannes BRONKHORST
cated a study to this Upanisad (1962: 34) - an accretion to an accretion to an insertion into the original Maitrayaniya Upanisad. This raises the question whether the enumeration containing anuvyäkhyāna might not be late, perhaps added, or completed, by a late redactor.
With regard to the Brhadaranyaka Upanisad, which is part of the Satapatha Brahmana, it is worthwhile to quote the following observation made by Michael Witzel (1987: 399 n. 76):
The final compilation of [the Satapatha Brahmana], made up of several independent portions, is probably a comparatively late one; yet the compiler was able still to put cross-references into the Vedic text;...; the compilator still knew Vedic well enough to produce... sentences referring forwards and backwards in the text. On the other hand: the compiler was different from the (much later) redactor who seems to have lived many generations after Yajnavalkya, even according to the various Vamsas found in [the Satapatha Brahmana] and [the Brhadaranyaka Upanisad]. I suspect that he was a contemporary of the Kanva dynasty or the Satavahana dynasty. (This problem will have to be treated separately). It is only the redactor that was responsible for glorification of Yajnavalkya and for his authorship of the White [Yajurveda]; note that this information is added as the very last words of [the Satapatha Brahmana]...; note that the redactor already describes Janaka as presenting land to Yajnavalkya.... Yet even the Satakarni inscription, 2 cent. A.D., ... still mentions only presents of cows given as daksiņā to Brahmins, and not a donation of land....
Janaka is described as presenting land to Yajnavalkya at the end of BAU 4.2.4 (so Witzel, op. cit., p. 409 n. 99), not therefore at the very end of the Upanisad. This means that, according to Witzel, the redactor has made additions and modifications in other places than only at the end of the SB and of the BAU. The enumeration of texts containing the term anuvyakhyāna might therefore conceivably be late,
too.
Let us next look at the exact form of the term anuvyākhyāna. This term occurs only at the above indicated places of the Brhadaranyaka and Maitrayaniya Upanisads, always in the same enumeration, and in passages that implicitly or explicitly refer to this enumeration, so far as I am aware. This may mean that one single editorial hand, or even one scribal error, may have been responsible for this word, and for its occurrence in this enumeration. And the possibility cannot be discarded that this single editorial hand 'corrected' some other word into anuvyäkhyāna under the influence of the following vyäkhyāna.
Upanisads and grammar
191
If we accept this last hypothesis, the most likely candidate for the original form underlying anuvyakhyana is, no doubt, anvākhyāna. This word occurs a few times in Vedic literature, once, at GB 1.2.10, in another enumeration of literary works. The fact that one ms. of the Gopatha Brahmana has sanvyäkhyänäḥ instead of sänvākhyānāḥ confirms our impression that anvakhyāna could easily be 'corrected' into anuvyākhyāna.
We arrive, then, at the hypothetical conclusion that our list originally contained the three terms sūtrany anväkhyänäni vyäkhyänäni, in this order. Does this help us to reach some form of understanding?
Consider first the pair sutra - anväkhyāna. This reminds us of the manuscripts of the Vadhula Śrautasutra, which contain both sutra and anväkhyāna. Anvākhyana is here the term used for the brahmana-portion accompanying this Śrautasutra. For, as Willem Caland (1926: 5 (307)) observed,
[d]ie Texte der Vadhūlas... haben... dieses Merkwürdige, dass zu dem Sutra ein eigenes Brahmana gehört, eine Art Anubrahmana, ein sekundäres Brahmana, das neben dem alten Brahmana der Taittiriyas (oder vielleicht richtiger: neben einem alten Brahmana, das mit dem der Taittiriyas aufs engste verwandt ist) steht: eine noch nie in einem vedischen Sütra angetroffene Eigentümlichkeit.
This secondary Brāhmaṇa of the Vadhula Śrautasutra calls itself *Anvakhyāna"."
It is, in view of the above, at least conceivable that the author of our enumeration had the Vadhula Śrautasutra in mind while adding anvakhyāna after sutra (supposing that he actually did so). Interestingly, there is another set of texts that appears to be referred to by the terms sutra and anväkhyāna. More precisely, this set consists of three texts, which are, it has been argued, referred to by the terms sūtra, anvākhyāna and vyakhyāna respectively, i.e., by the very three terms that occur in this order in our enumeration. What is more, these texts were already referred to in this manner well before the beginning of our era. I am speaking about Panini's Aṣṭādhyāyī, a
4. See Caland, 1928: 210 (510), 218 (518); Witzel, 1975: 102 n. 47. Witzel argues (1975: 82) that, in spite of the joint occurrence of Anvakhyanas and Vadhula Śrautasutra in the same manuscripts, "Eine Zuordnung zum Śrautasutra ist damit.... nicht notwendig gegeben."