________________
A. WEZLER
3.1. "The Mahā-Bhāṣya on rule 4. 1. 3", thus Cardona aptly summarizes its contents, "takes up the question of gender. The term linga, used in the meaning 'gender', denotes, in normal Sanskrit, a mark or characteristic. If the term is understood in this sense in grammar, then a linga is a characteristic of males, females, and things which are neither. A female (stri) would then be characterized by breasts and hair, a male (puruşa) by his body. hair, others by neither. This conception of linga does not work in grammar, it is noted, so that another concept is introduced. Any thing is characterized by different states of constituent elements or properties (guna) and these states constitute the genders of things."
46)
47)
48)
According to the värttika samstyänaprasavau lingam astheyau svakṛtantataḥ on Pān. 4. 1. 3 what has to be regarded as the basis of gender is the act of coagulating, on the one hand, and the act of procreating, on the other, the former being equated to stri and the latter to pums. After having explained this värttika, Patañjali pursues the question further, viz. thus (II 198, 4-5):
kasya punaḥ styänam stri pravṛttir va pumān/ guṇānām/keṣām/sabdasparśaraparasagandhānām /.
Now it is to the answer to the first question, viz. guṇānām, that Kaiyața gives the following explanation (which Muni Jambūvijaya must have had in view) (IV 23 a 12-15):
49)
10
45)
sattvarajastamāmsi guṇāḥ, tatpariṇāmarupāś ca tadātmakā eva sabdadayaḥ pañca guṇaḥ/ tatsanghatarupam ca ghaṭādi, na tu tadvyatiriktam avayavidravyam astiti samkhyanam siddhantaḥ //.
It is hence explicitly stated by Kaiyața that here Patanjali takes recourse to a central conception of Samkhya according to which any thing like a pot, etc. is considered to be nothing but an aggregate of the qualities 'sound', etc., the existence of a substance (lit. "a material whole") as different from them being denied,
50)
Yet, the definition of dravya as consisting of an aggregate of gunas is not only attested in the Pradipa, but is also used by Patañjali himself in the very same discussion, viz. in a passage (following upon Kätyäyana's värtt. 7) to which attention has already been drawn by Seyfort Ruegg and which runs
51)