Bhagwad Gita Vivechanatmak Shabdakosh

Author(s): Prahlad C Divanji
Publisher: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt Ltd

Page 32

xiv
Critical Word-Index to the Bhagavadgita
there were first put on the track of developing their intelligence on the right lines by the method of Upāsanā of Siva according to the Trika rites systematically defined for the first time in his Sivasūtra by Siddha Vasugupta, who is now known to be also the first Kāśmirian commentator of the Bhagavad gitā as known to the Kāśmirians of his time, and that those who had a philosophical turn of mind were organised into the Pratyabhijña school by Bhatta Somānanda, the author of Sivadrsti. (2) Another probable cause of the existence of the Kāśmir recension is that the MSS. of the Gitä which may have reached Kāśmir before the time of Vasugupta, the founder of the Trika sect of Saivism, wrote his commentary thereon, which is the earliest one known to have been written by a Kāśmirian Pandit, may have contained just the same 700 stanzas which Sankara has commented upon and distributed amongst the speakers in the same manner as in his commentary, but with certain variations in readings. Afterwards some scribe, who may have copied but one of them before the time of the next commentator, may have added the stanzas and half-stanzas just to show off his learning, and since then the work as current in Kāśmir may have been stamped with that peculiarity, besides that of the variations in readings, which now distinguishes that recension from the Vulgate. This too is probable because no MS. of Vasugupta's commentary has yet come to light. However, I believe that there is a greater probability on the side of the first reason because it is a general belief now that the text as known to Vasugupta was the same as that known to the later commentators and because none of the additional stanzas or half-stanzas has been composed in any of the larger metres in vogue from or after the 5th century A. D.
Whatever the reason, the recension is there with the distinct stamp of the province impressed upon it by the fact of its having been commented upon by several writers of the same school just as we have the Pippalāda recension of the Atharyayeda peculiar to that province and also a distinct unpublished recension of the Yogavasistha differing in extent and internal structure from that commented upon by Anandabodha Yati which has been published by the Nirnaya Sagar Press, Bombay.' A Word-Index to the Bhagavad gită claiming to be exhaustive cannot, therefore, afford to ignore it, especially so when so much importance as is before-mentioned is attached to it by eminent scholars. That is the reason why I have added a separate section in each Part of this work relating to the words occurring in the text according to that recension only. I have preferred to keep them in separate sections because the index to the Vulgate with its variants has itself become
1. Vide my article on "MS. No. 8771 at the Sri Pratápasimha Public Library, Srinagar" in the Bharatiya Vidya Vol. II, pp. 64-71,