Notes On Manuscript Transmission Of Vaisesika Sutra And Its Earliest Commentaries

Author(s): Harunaga Issacson
Publisher: Harunaga Issacson

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The text of V as printed is in many respects problematic and unsatisfactory. For this one can hardly reproach Thakur, for the material he had to work with simply was too poor and scanty to establish a reliable text. On the basis of Candrananda's text and commentary some improvements were possible, particularly in regard to the sutra text followed by Bhatta Vādīndra, and both Muni Jambūvijaya (in the second appendix of his edition of the VS with C) and M. Nozawa (in an article which appeared in 46 Further 1974) put forward a number of emendations to the sutrapatha." correction of the text of V, at least for the first two ähnikas, became possible with the publication of BhV, as has been remarked above. But even so, further improvements are rather badly needed, especially for the portions where the corresponding text of BhV is not available.
Fortunately there is a source which will allow an advance in the right direction. This is nothing else than the palm-leaf manuscript of V, from which the transcript used by Thakur was made. This manuscript was acquired rather recently by the Kerala University Manuscripts Library, where it bears the number 21600C.47 The route by which it came into the library's collection is not completely clear. According to the library's records, its last owner was K.V. Sharma. There can however be little doubt that this is indeed the very same manuscript which was described by V. Venkatarama Sharma and transcribed for Thakur; for that the manuscript agrees too closely with the edition. For instance, the lacunae in the edition which Thakur usually attempts to fill up by conjecture nearly always correspond to the places where text has been lost due to the margins of the palm-leaf manuscript being broken.
The condition of the manuscript seems to have deteriorated only slightly from the time that the transcript Thakur used was made. The margins of from the defective state in which both have reached us. Indeed, as will be shown directly below, consultation of the original palm-leaf manuscript of V frequently allows restoration of a text substantially closer to that of BhV. Another factor to be taken into consideration is the possibility that errors were made during the process of abridgement; for instance, in some occasions, the sense of a passage may have been altered, even perhaps against the intention of the abridger, by the omission of certain sentences or words. Of course this is only likely if the person responsible for the abridgement was, as I suspect, different from Bhaṭṭa Vādīndra himself. This type of change or error can however probably not be identified with certainty because it can never be excluded (and is usually more plausible) that omissions of the kind I am thinking of are to be put down to scribal error.
46 The two scholars do not however always agree in their emendations.
47 This manuscript too is not listed in Bhaskaran 1984. I have consulted it from photographs.
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