Notes On Manuscript Transmission Of Vaisesika Sutra And Its Earliest Commentaries

Author(s): Harunaga Issacson
Publisher: Harunaga Issacson

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nāgarī transcript from a single palm-leaf manuscript in Malayalam script.34 This manuscript had been mentioned five years earlier by V. Venkatarama Sharma, in a very brief article published in the Journal of the Oriental Insitute, M.S. University of Baroda.35 The transcript, riddled with errors and lacunae, was sadly defective as a basis for the constitution of a reliable text, but on the other hand the importance of the work was so great-remember that at this time Candrānanda's commentary had not been published that we may be grateful indeed to Thakur for undertaking the task of its editor. 36
Although the text was published as the work of an anonymous author whose date could not be precisely fixed, in the introduction Thakur stated that 'it agrees with the sutra tradition followed by Bhatta Vādindra of the South. A preliminary study of the available portions of the Kanādasūtranibandha of Vādindra has convinced us that the present commentary is an abridged version of this onibandha.937 Some time later, after a more thorough comparison of the text he had edited with manuscripts of the commentary by Bhatta Vādīndra on the VS (BV),38 Thakur concluded
34 Note that some information, such as the fact that the original manuscript was a palmleaf one and that the transcript used was into Devanagari, is to be found in the Sanskrit bhumika (in this case on p. 23), but is omitted in the corresponding portion of the English introduction. There are numerous other differences of content and wording as well.
3* Sharma 1951, 226-227. The wording used by Sharma, '(recently I was able to procure a palınleaf manuscript containing an unknown commentary (urtti) on the Vaiśesika-sūtras, with the text,' suggests that the manuscript was actually owned by him at the time. From the introduction of Thakur's edition, however, one gathers that the manuscript had been in the possession of V.A. Ramaswami Shastri (who had however passed away by the time the introduction was written); '...a transcript of a single Malayalam manuscript prepared and supplied to us by the late lamented scholar, V.A. Ramaswami Šāstrin' (p. 7), ... mätskeyarn ... vio eo ramasvāmiśāstrimahodayasyantika asit (p. 23).
36 As Thakur himself elegantly puts it, atra trutibähulyam asman sthagayati sma visayagauravam ca prakāśanavidhau prerayali smety ubhayata akrsyamanair asmabhih prakāśanam evorarikrtam (p. 23).
*English introduction to the edition of V, p. 8. The corresponding passage in the Sanskrit bhumikā reads Trayodasasatakasthitasya sarikarakirkaräparanāmno bhattavādindrasya kanādasūtranibandhena prastutasya granthasya drdhah sambandho viharigamadrśā avalokito 'smābhiḥ | iyam hi vyākhyā visayasāmyena bhāsāsāmyena ca tasya nibandhasyaiva sarasaingraharupā ily abhāti (p. 26).
It is something of a problem to determine what we should call this text. The name Vaišeşikasütravārttika is found in three of the four colophons quoted from the manuscripts by Thakur (1960, 23 and 26); the fourth uses the name Kaņādasūtravärttika. These colophons are again reproduced in the printed text. The colophon of the section commenting on the first three sutras, attributing it to Bhatta Vādīndra's patron, the Yadava king Srīkysna, reads as follows: iti śriyadukulakamalakalikāvikāsabhāskarabhupalalalitamahārājādhirājasriktsnabhūpālaviracite tarkasagaranamni vaiseșikasūtravärttike
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