Authorship Of Vakya Kanda Tika

Author(s): Ashok Aklujkar
Publisher: Ashok Aklujkar

Page 19

The Authorship of the Vākya-Kända-Tiki
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patah tapasstya; yan-nāma loke nitarāṁ prasiddham + vidvaj jananānh yak khalu sarvatra giyate jagati. Such an impressive similarity of diction and pattern even in the writing of incidental verses would be hard to account for unless either author is supposed to be within the range of direct influence by the other.
5.2 A further question is whether Punya-rāja is older than or contemporaneous with Helā-räja. In other words, is it probable that the summary verses were known and available to Helā-rāja and that it was he who incorporated them toward the end of his commentary ? Since the verses are found in all complete manuscripts (see 2.1 above) and are inc'uded before the statement of ascription in manuscripts E[7] and E[14] which ascribe the commentary to Helā-rāja, one is inclined to conclude that they probably formed a part of the Vakya-kānda-tikā manuscripts from a very early time and that Helā-rāja could have possibly appended them to his Vākya-kanda-ţikā. But the manuscript evidence does not indicate anything more than this; it does not imply that the verses are definitely older than Helā-rāja's work. In fact, on the basis of evidence gleaned from a different source, one can almost conclusively prove that they cannot be older than the Vakya-kāndafikā. A comparison of them with the summary and comments at various points in the Vakya-kāņda-tikā (see 4. lc(v) above) reveals, as I shall demonstrate in a future study, that the author who composed them has made every effort to follow as closely as possible the prose summary and comments. Thus, Punya-rāja seems to have lived after Helā-rāja not far removed in time. To judge from the component-raja in his name, he can also be said to have probably come from the same family as Helā-rāja. That component is characteristic of the names in Helā-rāja's family as we can see from Helā-rāja's own name and those of his father and brother, Bhūti-rāja and Indu-rāja.
5.3 Ramakrishna Kavi (1930:235 fn. 3) and S. Iyer (1963: xiii) have hinted at the possibility that Punya-rāja may be identical with Phulla-rāja, from whose work (krti) two gaps in the text of the Prakirnaka-prakāśa have been filled (S. Iyer 1963: 261.8-268. 13, 280. 17-283.1). Since it does not seem very likely that three persons having so similarly structured names as Helā-rāja, Pusya-rāja, and Phulla-rāja could be associated with the same work as commentators of the one sort or the other and since either form from the pair "Punya-rāja" phullarāja can be a result of the miswriting of the other, the identification of Punya-rāja with Phulla-rāja is a tempting proposition. Furthermore, like the former, Phulla-rāja seems to be later than