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THE NYAYASŪTRA COMMENTARIAL TRADITION
however, has been lost owing to the cows' maturation in time, i.e., their getting older with time. Why then, some fictitious partner in discourse asks, should they not be rejuvenated by means of directly administrating the life-giving elixir consisting in the readily obtained teaching of Vacaspati's guru Trilocana?29 Udayana considers this suggestion to be appropriate; however, first the Varttika has to be extracted from the swamp of bad treatises and put on firm ground. again, this ground being Vacaspati's commentary on it.30 The even more ancient Nyāyabhāṣya, however, is conceived by Udayana as having the form of the body of the sastra and thus not considered by him as something additional to it, just like the Mimämsä in relation to the Veda; this statement has a predecessor already in Uddyotakara's puspika where he calls Vätsyāyana 'the likeness (pratima) of Akṣapāda,' or - following another reading of the verse - ascribes to him the intuition (pratibha) of Akṣapada.32 This close association of Sutra and Bhāṣya, not unparalleled in the early classical philosophical literature, may well account for the fact that even after
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29 Next to Trilocana's presumed lost commentary on the Nyayabhāṣya, his main work Nyāyamañjarī could have had the form of an extensive commentary on the Nyayasutra itself (cf. Steinkellner, 1961: 157; Solomon, 1986: 560, 564); Thakur, however, considers the Nyayamañjarī to have been a commentary on the Nyayabhasya (cf. Thakur, 2000: 110). As only fragments of Trilocana's writings are preserved, it is difficult to determine the formal nature of these works (cf. also Thakur, 1947: 37) because he could have commented directly on selected sutra-s also in a commentary on the Nyayabhāṣya or even the Nyayavärttika. 30 Cf. NVTP 3, 4-11: nanu cirantane 'smin nibandhe mahajanaparigṛhīte bahavo nibandhas tathavidhāḥ santīti kṛtam anenety aha - icchamīti (cf. NVTT 1, 9, quoted in n. 15 above), nanu yadi granthakārasampradāyāvicchedena te nibandhaḥ katham kunibandhaḥ (cf. again NVTT 1, 9)? atha sampradayo vicchinnaḥ katham tavapiyam vicchinnasampradāyā tātparyaṭīkā sunibandha ity ata aha atijaratīnām (cf. NVTT 1, 10, quoted in n. 15 above) iti. uddyotakarasampradayo hy amüṣām yauvanam. tac ca kālaparipäkavakad galitam iva. kim nämätra trilocanaguroh sakāśād deśarasayanam āsāditam amūṣām punarnavibhāvāya diyata iti yujyate. na ca kunibandhapankamagnānām tad datum ucitam. atas tasmād utkṛsya svanibandhasthale sanniveśanarupasamuddharanam eva sampratam ity arthaḥ.
31 Cf. NVTP 3, 19-20: bhāṣyasya ca tadvivaranarupasya sastraśarīrarūpatayā na śāsträd adhikyam manyate mīmāmsäyä iva vedāt.
Cf. NV 530 9: yad akṣapädapratimo bhasyam vätsyāyano jagau .... This reading is confirmed by Vindhyeshvari Prasad Dvivedin's edition in Bibliotheca Indica 113 (Calcutta 1887-1914), reset as Kashi Sanskrit Series 33 in 1915 (Benares). However, in his extensive erudite introduction, the esteemed pandit refers to the relevant verse with the alternate reading -pratibho, in this context preferred by him to -pratimo, as read by some of his mss. (cf. p. 56 of his Bhumika to the B.I. edition and p. 73 of the Bhumika in KSS 33, with n. 2). The edition of the NV in the Calcutta Sanskrit Series (No. 18 and 29, Calcutta 1936-1944), which solely relies on the two editions by Vindhyeshvari Prasad Dvivedin (cf. Preface p. 7), curiously enough reads akṣapā