Notes On Manuscript Transmission Of Vaisesika Sutra And Its Earliest Commentaries

Author(s): Harunaga Issacson
Publisher: Harunaga Issacson

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that the former was indeed 'nothing but an abridged version of the Nibandha giving mainly the interpretation of the sutras. It must have been prepared by Vādīndra himself or some of his followers for those who were interested in the purport of the sutras and had no aptitude to enter into the abundant discussions of the Nibandha.'39
The publication of BhV itself, edited again by Thakur, unfortunately only followed very much later, in 1985. This edition is in many respects less satisfactory than the edition of V; we are, for instance, given no information on the manuscript basis of the text.40 Since variant readings are never given, one suspects that the text may be no more than a transcript, sporadically corrected, of a single manuscript.41 This publication also contained trisütrivyākhyā samapta (Thakur 1960, 23 n.2; BhV 57). This provides us with another title, and one which is explicitly said to be a real name rather than a description or generic name (as Vaiseṣikasūtravārt tika can be taken to be). Of course the extent to which colophons should be relied on in these matters is debated. None the less, this particular colophon is probably authorial rather than scribal, bearing in mind the fact that it is not a concluding colophon of the work or an adhyaya or ähnika, but separates what is supposed to be the work of the royal patron (we may agree with Thakur in taking this to be a polite fiction) from that of Bhaṭṭa Vādīndra himself. Certainly the style of this colophon is more flowery than one would expect a scribal one to be. And it seems more likely that a complimentary colophon should have been composed by Bhaṭṭa Vādīndra than by a later scribe unconnected with the court of Śrīkṛṣṇa. For these reasons, I am personally inclined to believe that the title Tarkasagara may be the one bestowed on the work by its author, and that he also calls the work a Vaiseṣikasūtravārttika. The titlepage of the edition refers to the text as Vaiseṣikavärttika, and this form of the title is also used by Halbfass (e.g. Halbfass 1992, 79). As far as I am aware, there is no basis for this title in the colophons or the work itself. Most likely it is an abbreviation of Vaiseṣikasūtravārt tika introduced by Thakur or perhaps even more probably-by the publishers. In his introductions to the edition of V, Thakur had called the text Kaṇādasūtranibandha, as we saw above; he also uses this form in the introduction he contributed to Jambūvijaya's edition of the VS together with Candrananda's commentary. Finally, Thakur's 1960 article refers to the work as Kanādasūtranibandha, on the basis of the second half of the opening verse of the commentary: käṇādasūtrasya maya nibandho vidhiyate śarikarakinkarena. The reprint of V as an appendix to Thakur's edition of BhV is given the name Nibandhasara, an allusion to the last two possible titles of BhV. But here, again, there is no manuscript authority for such an appellation of V, and this is probably to be regarded as a title made up by the editor or the publisher.
39 Thakur 1960, 27. Thakur reaffirmed his opinion that the brief 'anonymous' commentary was an abridgement of Bhaṭṭa Vādīndra's voluminous one in the introduction he contributed to Muni Jambūvijaya's edition of the VS with Candrananda's commentary (p. 17).
40 There is no introduction by the editor, though we find an amukham by Dr. Jayamanta Miśra and an aumakramikam by Ananda Jha. Neither of these provides the sort of information that a student of the text looks for first.
41In his article on this text Thakur had mentioned that three manuscripts in Malay
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