Bhattoji Diksita On Sphota

Author(s): Johannes Bronkhorst
Publisher: Johannes Bronkhorst

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JOHANNES BRONKHORST
Bhattoji is known to have written two grammatical works before the Siddhantakaumudi and the Praudha Manoramā. These are the Śabdakaustubha and the one known by the names Vaiyakaraṇa Bhūṣaṇa Kārikā and Vaiyākaraṇamatonmajjana. It is in these works that we find most of his ideas about the philosophy of grammar. These ideas did not bring him instant fame, it appears. The Sabdakaustubha has only in part been preserved, which suggests that it was not much used in the beginning. Regarding the Vaiyakaraṇa Bhuṣaṇa Kārikā the view has been propounded that it has only survived along with i.e., included in the commentaries of Kaunda Bhatta. That would mean that, if Kaunda Bhatta had not composed these commentaries, this work might not have survived.70 Not unrelated to this issue is the uncertainty which exists regarding the name which Bhattoji himself gave to this second work. Later authors - among them Nāgeśa Bhaṭṭa, Hari Dīkṣita and Vaidyanatha Payagunda - call it Vaiyakaraṇamatonmajjana. However, it seems that the Vaiyākaraṇamatonmajjana was noted, and commented upon, by someone else, a pupil of Bhaṭṭoji called Vanamāli Miśra, a manuscript of whose commentary called Vaiyakaraṇamatonmajjinī has been preserved.72
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Some indications seem to confirm that the Sabdakaustubha was initially barely taken into consideration even by authors who knew it. Śesa Kṛṣṇa's other son Seṣa Nārāyaṇa, author of a commentary on the Mahabhāṣya called Sūktiratnākara (ed. Pt. Bhāgavata 1999) appears to have known this early work of Bhattoji. An introductory stanza to the Sūktiratnākara states (no. 14, p. 3):
harikaiyaṭabhaṭṭiyāṣ tikāḥ santy eva yady apihadya/
tad api gabhiraduruhatvadyair bodhaya nālam taḥ||
"Although there exist nowadays commentaries [on the Mahābhāṣya] by [BhartṛJhari, by Kaiyata and by Bhatta, they do not suffice to understand [that text] on account of (its?, their?) deep and abstruse nature and other reasons."
It is not immediately clear which is the commentary by Bhatta mentioned by Seṣa Nārāyaṇa. Yudhisthira Mīmāmsaka's history of grammatical literature makes no mention of any commentator before Seṣa Nārāyaṇa called Bhatta. Bhattoji, on the other hand, uses that appellation for himself, for example in the fifth introductory stanza to his Sabdakaustubha: bhattojibhatto januṣaḥ saphalyam labdhum Thate. Mīmāmsaka lists Bhattoji's Sabdakaustubha as a commentary on the Aṣṭādhyāyī, but this does not appear to be correct. Another one of its introductory stanzas announces "I extract the gem of
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