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INTERPRETING VĀKYAPADĪYA 2.486 595 system (including the Aştādhyāyīl? and vārttika) but no reliable interpretation of the Mahābhāsya18 and no precise knowledge of what the Mahābhāsya had implicitly taken from the Samgraha and related works. Generally, it was the pre-Patañjali scholarship in theories about language, grammar, and related topics and the knowledge of the influence of that scholarship on Patañjali's own thinking that had become elusive by the time of Candrācārya and his associates. The inability of their predecessors to cope with a work that demanded knowledge of several branches of learning and the prevalence of Mahābhāsya interpretations based on uninformed guess-work (suşka tarka; see Aklujkar 1978: 18; Cardona 1978: 95-6) authored by Vaiji, Saubhava, the Mahābhāsya survived precariously before Candräcārya established it again. Kielhorn (1876) and Cardona (1978) have pointed out that the verses do not support any such inference.
17 Remarks by Thieme (1956: 19 fn. 45-6) and Cardona (1978: 97, lines 6-10) leave the impression that in their view the understanding and use of the Astādhyāyi had suffered a decline before Candrācārya recovered the agama. As indicated in Aklujkar 1978:16-9, the evidence before us does not warrant this conclusion. Although a Mahābhāsya-related agama would include at least some knowledge contained in or inspired by the Aştādhyāyi and although improper understanding of the Mahabhāsya may in some cases result in an improper understanding of the Astādhyāyi, we have no indications in the available evidence that the Astādhyāyi as such was eclipsed either as a body of knowledge or as a generally accessible text.
18 It should be borne in mind that bhraştah in 485b is an attributive (qualifying or delimiting) adjective, not a predicate adjective. The author's intention is not to assert loss of the entire vyākaraṇāgama or the entire Pāṇinian grammatical tradition, but to speak of the lost portion of the vyākaranāgama. That this vyākaranāgama is one which has a bearing on the Mahābhāsya is something we know from the context (patañjalinā, mahābhāsye, patañjali-sisyebhyah).
