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INTERPRETING VAKYAPADİYA 2.486
or relatively remote written source or body of sources. Therefore, the first possibility is that Candracārya and others would try to make the source or sources not so remote, that is, to make the Southern grantha available in the North. The second possibility is that they would try to collect the scattered written record; a reconstruction of the agama would have been impossible without a systematic exploration of the sources in which it that was preserved. The third possibility is Candrācārya and others would try to interpret what they found in the South.15
3.2 Of these three possibilities-reintroduction of manuscripts in the North, piecing together of the āgama preserved in the Southern sources, and making sense of the relevant enlightening works in the South, the first possibility is not likely to have been intended for expression in 486a. The words bhasya-bījānusāribhiḥ and bahu-śākhatvam nitaḥ indicate that the initial achivement registered by Candracārya and others is likely to be intellectual and unlikely to be a simple transcription of manuscripts. Besides, if Candrācārya and others had been responsible for giving wider currency to a work or body of works, details such as title, etc. of that work
15 Theoretically, this interpretation could have been two-fold: (a) reading the Southern record by mastering its script, and (b) making sense of the sentences or remarks seen in the record. The first type of interpretation, however, is not likely to be meant here. Since Sanskrit manuscripts were commonly written in the local scripts, decipherment was probably not considered to be such a rare achievement as to deserve a special mention. Secondly, the accompanying qualification bhasya-bijānusāribhiḥ indicates that the achievement of Candracārya and others was interpretative in the sense of understanding, comprehension, or making sense.
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