Notes On Manuscript Transmission Of Vaisesika Sutra And Its Earliest Commentaries

Author(s): Harunaga Issacson
Publisher: Harunaga Issacson

Page 14

drawing conclusions. The text of the Jaina Devanāgarī manuscript may be transcribed as follows from Plate V, beginning in line 5. ataḥsabdo pi / ataḥsabdo pi vairāgyaprajñākathā(ya) paripākādikām śişyagunasampadam hetutvenāpadiśati / yasmād ayam sisyo gunasampada yuktas tato smai praśnebhyo nantaram dharmmam vyākhyāsyāmah. At the point we are presently concerned with the scribe wrote kathāyao, but this was later altered whether by the scribe himself or another we cannot tell—to katha, by the cancellation of the ya. Clearly the scribe had misread sa for tha (an easy mistake to make, especially from an examplar in Sāradā script) 28 and the reading katha is a wrong correction of the senseless kathāyao. It may therefore be regarded as certain that "kaşayao is the correct reading, and from his acceptance of kathao, with not so much as a note in the apparatus, we are forced to conclude that in this case at least the editor has been less than scrupulously careful in transcribing his manuscripts and in critically reading his own text. We may note that another substantive variant of the Jaina Devanāgarī manuscript has not been reported in Jambūvijaya's apparatus, though this is admittedly only the clear dittography of atahsabdo pi. On the other hand the single variant which is given in the apparatus is a false one, for the manuscript clearly reads hetutvenápadiśati as transcribed above, and not hetutvenopadiśati as the apparatus suggests.
Despite the fact that this is no isolated example, I should repeat here 28 There are other places too where the Jaina Devanāgari manuscript shows traces of having been copied from a Sāradā examplar. For instance, in a few cases jihvámūliya before k has been misread by the scribe as tk; thus in 1.1.28 the section of the manuscript which gives the sutrapatha separately reads samyogavibhāgāt karmaņām for samyogavibhāgāh karmanām. Another case which should be noted is the sūtra 8.10. The edition reads this dravyeşv anitaretarakāraņāt kāraņāyaugapadyat. No variants on this are given in the critical apparatus, but in the urddhipatrakam Jambūvijaya reports that the Säradā manuscript and the section of the Jaina Devanāgarī manuscript which gives the sūtras within the commentary read thus, while the first part of the Jaina manuscript, giving the sutrapātha alone, reads dravyeşv itaretarakāranāt kāranāyaugapadyat. He then adds that 'dravyeşv anitaretarakāraņāḥ kāraņāyaugapadyat' iti patho 'tra samicino bhāti (p. 231). He certainly is right about this, but two points need to be remarked on. First of all, the Saradā manuscript is in fact not available here as a witness. As was correctly noted in the last entry in the apparatus on p. 62, a large section, including the text of 8.6-13, has been left out in the Sāradā manuscript (and this applies also to the other Sāradā manuscript, not known to Jambūvijaya, which is introduced below). So it is the Jaina Devanāgari manuscript alone which is present here. Secondly, the reading kāraņāt which we find in both sections of the manuscript, can with virtual certainty be explained as misreadings of (Śāradā) jihvāmülīya. The fact, then, that even the Jaina Devanāgarī manuscript most probably descended from a Sāradā manuscript, is an additional piece of evidence tending to suggest that Candrānanda was a Kāśmīra.