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Panini's Fame in Patanjali's View
471
"Kielhom records no variant, e.g. Akumári for akumaran. "Yet he is by no means at his wit's end, but tries to clear away this obstacle by arguing in the following manner: "Although the maxim 'the correct need not be the original' is generally true, sometimes corruptions do creep in texts, handed down through oral tradition from the hoary past." He then quotes Vāk yapadiya 2.482, i.e. refers to a report according to which the South Indians maintained and retained the true text" of the MBh., "in a single manuscript". What Limaye says next is: "It stands to reason that instead of Panini's fame being extended up to even children, it should extend as far as Cape Camorin, the southemmost tip of India, from Salātura" ... "Later on, India was described as having extended 'from the Himalayas to Cape Camorin', a phrase, which, as I shall presently show, is found in the Sabarabhāşya on Jaimini's Sūtras and in the Nyāyamañjari of Jayantabhatça."
Since Limaye mentions it in a concessive clause, I am not sure that he has really understood the 'maxin' he quotes. But what he ultimately must have had in mind is the rule of thumb of textual criticism that a reading which is grammatically, etc., correct, intelligible and meaningful in its context, need not for these reasons alone also be the original one, i.e. ought to be preferred to another reading which is deficient in these or one of these regards. The proposition that texts, and not only orally transmitted ones and not only extraordinarily old ones, suffer various kinds of corruptions is similarly not only true, but a truism. But just as this latter observation does not, of course, justify suspecting each and every word, or any word, of a text to be corrupt, so too the 'maxim' cannot simply be reversed so as to teach that every reading which is correct in the sense explained in the foregoing) is therefore to be suspected of not being original!
And Bharthari's testimony is of no help either in this regard; for even if it is correct and its interpretation should be regarded as clear, it does not do more than specify one of the many rcasons for the well-known and certainly evident fact that Patanjali's MBh. has not come down to us in its original form, that is to say, that it contains corrupt readings, later additions, etc. But again this undoubtedly true observation cannot by any means be considered as justifying an approach to the transmitted text like that of Limaye. If we were to tolerate brcaking such a hole in the well-founded rampant of philological methods, we could equally well raze it to the ground once and for all and start rewriting texts like the MBh. just as we fancy them to have been originally. I do not, of course, want to intimate that the fact that Kielhom docs not record any variant reading is a guarantee of akumaran being necessarily corrcct: but the 'rcasons' adduced by Limaye (so far) are certainly not even sufficient to cast doubt on it. And, to be sure, the possibility that a new critical cdition of the MBh.” might altcr thc picture in this case, would be but mcre speculation that just should not be used as an argument.
4. In view of the nature of Limaye's arguments as quoted by me in the foregoing it docsn't come as a surprise that hc pcrsues his aim further by trying to accumulate circumstantial cvidence meant to show that Patanjali could have known Cape Comorin and