Authorship Of Vakyapadiya Vrtti

Author(s): Ashok Aklujkar
Publisher: Ashok Aklujkar

Page 1

THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE VĀKYAPADIYA-VRTTI*
By Ashok Aklujkar, Vancouver
1.1 It has been a long tradition in India to ascribe the Vștti (V in abbreviation) of the first two kāņdas of the Trikāņdi to Bharthari and to accept it as an integral part of the Vākyapadiya?. This tradition is
* I am grateful to Dr. MADELEINE BIARDEAU for promptly making available to me a copy of her edition of the Brahma-kānda, and to Dr. GEORGE L. HART, the authorities of the Adyar Library, Prof. K. V. ABHYANKAR, ACĀRYA LIMAYE, PANDITA V. B. BHAGWAT, Dr. S. D. JOSHI, and Prof. WILHELM RAU for making the Vakya-kānda-vștti available to me in microfilms and transcripts. The kernel of the present article constituted a paper read at the one hundred and seventy-ninth annual meeting of the American Oriental Society in New York (March 1969).
1 (a) Vākyapadiya was originally the title of only the first two kāņdas of Bharthari's magnum opus; the entire work consisting of three kāņdas was called Trikāņdi in the older tradition (AKLUJKAR 1969: 547–555).
(b) The V of the first two kāņdas only is available to us and it alone seems to have been accepted in the tradition as a genuine, inseparable constituent of the Vākyapadiya. See "The Extent of Bhartshari's Vștti" (AKLUJKAR, forthcoming).
(c) It has been convincingly shown by C. SHASTRI (1930: 636-644, 1934: Skt. Intro,: -1826; cf. R. KAVI 1930: 235—241; KUNHAN RAJA 1936: 285—298) that the commentary on the first kāņda published under the name of Punyarāja in the Benares Sanskrit Series by MĀNAVALLI (1887) is in fact an abridgement of Bhartphari's V of the same kāņda. The unabridged V was edited for the first time by C. SHASTRI (1934), and it is his text that has essentially been followed in the editions by R. SARMĀ (1963), BIARDEAU (1964a), BHAGWAT (1965), and S. IYER (1966a). BIARDEAU and S. IYER (1964a, 1965) have translated the V into French and English respectively. But, as fns. 16, 19, 22—24, and 29 below indicate and as my forthcoming studies of the V and of BIARDEAU's interpretation will substantiate, much improvement is desirable both in the Sanskrit text and the translations.
(d) Two Sanskrit commentaries on the Brahma-kāņda-vịtti are available, an old one by Vșşabha and a modern one by R. SARMĀ (1963). The first has been edited by C. SHASTRI (1934) in excerpts and by S. IYER