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THE ADYAR LIBRARY BULLETIN
greater freedom the South enjoyed from agression, the more durable writing material it abundantly had, the financial support its scholars received, and the tradition it created of bestowing filial care on manuscripts. Distant regions tend to preserve older language forms as well as works. Hence an interpretation of 486a which mainly argues that the situation concerning Sanskrit works was essentially the same in the days of Candrācārya as we have witnessed it to be in the twentieth century should not come as a surprise.
3.7 To sum up, just as we need to distinguish our perspective from that of the author of 486 (1.2 above), we should distinguish the Įikā author's perspective from that of the author of 486. The Țikā interpretation, particularly because of its twofold understanding of āgama, is not the one we should view as intended in parvatād āgamam labdhvā. The supernatural element in it may go back to the author of 481-90, for the possibility of that author having believed that Candrācārya and others were guided to the lost vyākaraṇāgama through some extraordinary encounter cannot be logically ruled out. However, we can be certain that the possibility is not expressed in 486 and that, for this reason, it should be treated as non-existent. It seems more than likely that in the days of Bhartshari and his disciples the story of Candrācārya's acquisition of the agama was a simple tale of intelligent guesses and determined search, in which the only miracle was that Candrācārya succeeded in the face of overwhelming odds. The simple tale seems to have been gradually mythologized
