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THE NYAYASŪTRA COMMENTARIAL TRADITION
he established what he considered to be the authentic Nyayasutratext, assembling those sutra-s he considered genuine and presenting - without further comment or even discussion - their correct readings. In devoting himself to this task, just like in writing the Nyayatattväloka, Väcaspati must have carefully studied the earlier commentaries available to him and evaluated their testimony. For the purpose of compiling the Nyāyasūtroddhāra special attention was paid by him to the Nyayabhāṣya. This is suggested by the mangalasloka of the Nyayasütroddhära according to one of the manuscripts of the work accessible to me.50 The title word uddhāra of the compilation is telling: understood in the light of the mangalaśloka, the work constitutes an 'extraction' of the Nyayasutra from the Nyayabhäṣya, the oldest and only classical direct commentary available to Vacaspati and his contemporaries, the concise graha nakavākya-s of which had been susceptible to being taken as part of the root text in the course of transmission early on. The fact that the word uddhāra also means 'rescue' and is in this latter sense used technically to refer to the restoration of temples and cult-images, may in addition throw some light on Vacaspati's perception and evaluation of the state of his tradition's foundational text at that time.51
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Vacaspati Miśra's historicist perception of the Nyaya tradition which is implied in the above becomes evident in the way he refers to his fellow philosophers in this tradition and their respective historical position. The expressions used by him are navyaḥ or navīnāḥ for the "new" generation(s), vṛddhaḥ, präñcaḥ and sampradayikāḥ, or even vṛddhatamaḥ for the 'older,' 'traditional' generation(s). In his recent
50 Cf. the Jodhpur ms. (ms. no. 27940 in the catalogue of the Sanskrit and Prakrit manuscripts in the Jodhpur collection of the Rajasthan Oriental Research Institute, edited by T. Joshi and D. Sharma) fol. 1v 1-2:
śrīvācaspatimiśreņa mithileivarasūriņā /
śrigautamiyasüträni likhyante bhāṣyatah pṛthak II.
The same introductory verse appears at the beginning of a Nyayasūtroddhāra ms. preserved at the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (BORI) (ms. no. 740 of 1887-1891, fol. Iv 1). On the problematic issue of the various published Nyayasūtroddhara-s, also in relation to the published Nyayasucinibandha, cf. Preisendanz (1994: 3-5). A comparative study of sutrapatha-mss. which bear the title Nyayasūtroddhāra and other titles and in which the respective compilation of the sutra-s is ascribed to Vacaspati Miśra II is under preparation.
51 Cf. also the expression samuddharana - relating to Uddyotakara's Nyāyavārttikaused by Vacaspati Miśra I in the introductory and concluding verses of the Nydyavärttikatätparyatika (cf. above, n. 15).
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Cf. also the frequently used sampradayas tu..., in contradistinction to the nayvāḥ or
anye.