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THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE VĀKYA-KĀNDA-ȚIKĀ*
ASHOK AKLUJKAR
1.1 Since the date of its publication (1887) in the Benares Sanskrit Series, the çıkā on the verses of the second book of Bhartshari's Trikāndı or Vakyapadiya (Aklujkar 1969:547-555) has been ascribed to Punya-rāja. A few scholars (e.g. Kosambi 1945:65.9-10, 67.7-9: Bhattacharya 1954:4-5) have given the name of the author of this commentary as Helā-rāja, but that is obviously due to oversight and is not intended to be a deliberately reached conclusion regarding the authorship of the work.1 Thus, on the whole, the ascription to Punya-rāja has gone unchallenged in the writings of the compilers of manuscript catalogues, of the editors of Bhartshari's works, of the scholars working on Bhartshari's views and of the historians of Sanskrit grammar. However, it seems likely to me that a serious mistake has been made in deciding the problem of authorship in this case and that the Vakya-kānda-ţikā is more likely to be a work of Helā-rāja, the well-known commentator of the
• The present article is an extended version of the paper that I read before the
South Asia section of the one hundred and eighty-first annual meeting of the American Oriental Society in Cambridge, Massachusetts (April 1971). Appropriately enough, it also marks an extention of the critical activity which Pandita Charu Deva Shastri initiated more than forty years ago concerning the works of Bharthari. I wish to acknowledge the assistance received from the Canada Council and to express my gratitude to Professor Wilhelm Rau and the obliging librarians at several manuscript libraries in India, without whose kindness the necessary manuscript material would not have
become available to me. 1. According to Dvivedi (1961: 8), Hari-vrsabha, Punya-rāja, and Hela
raja are the three names of one and the same person, namely, Helā-rāja. P. P. S. Shastri (1930:4348) also remarks that Punya-rāja and Helä-rāja are identical. I do not think that these baseless views merit any discussion (cf. S. Iyer 1969:17). For a text-critical explanation of the name Harivrsabha, see Aklujkar 1972:182-183 fn. 2.
