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INTERPRETING VĀKYAPADIYA 2.486
599
work will bring home the fact that the agama it contains is almost always related to the Mahābhāsya. More often than not the pattern is one of stating some theses in the area of language and grammar and then mentioning or discussing some Mahābhāsya statements that could be associated with those theses. This pattern is particularly obvious in the third ķāņda but is not missing in the first two kāņda-s particularly in the Vștti portion.21 Traditional scholars have not been oblivious to it.22 Thus, there can be no doubt that āgama as it related to the Mahābhāsya was something that Bhartshari valued greatly. The interpretation I have proposed agrees with this observation, as it does not rest on the notion of an āgama distantly or indirectly related to the Mahābhāsya.
(g) We know it as a fact, especially after the discovery of Kautilya's Artha-śāstra and the Bhāsa plays, that many Sanskrit works which would throw a flood of light on dark periods and serve to link later works to earlier works survived in manuscript form in the South long after they ceased to be available in the North. This was but natural in view of the relatively
21 Bhartshari's commentary to the Mahābhāsya retains the thrust of this pattern, but naturally, since it must follow the order of Mahābhāsya statements, reverses the sequence of the constituents of the pattern; wherever the Mahābhāsya statements can be related to the general theses of the Vaiyākaraṇa-s it cites or utilizes those general theses.
22 In concluding the Prakirna-prakāśa, Helā-rāja observes : sūkti-sriyah ... etāḥ ... harer bhāsyābdhi-piyūṣa-cchatācchurita-vigrahāḥ. One of the introductory' verses of Tārānātha Tarka-väcaspati's Sabdārtha-ratna is as follows: mahābhāsyārtha-tātparya-jñāpikāḥ kārikāḥ svayam krtvā vākyapadiyākhyam nibandham kştavān harih/l.
