Notes On Manuscript Transmission Of Vaisesika Sutra And Its Earliest Commentaries

Author(s): Harunaga Issacson
Publisher: Harunaga Issacson

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falls short of the ideal which is broadly sketched below.
Those who undertake to study classical Indian philosophy must inevitably base their researches in the first place on texts. And since it is practically speaking never the case that we possess the author's autograph manuscript, certified beyond doubt, and unambiguously legible,53 it appears to me to follow inevitably that textual criticism is an essential discipline.54 And especially in cases where the surviving manuscripts are all many centuries later than the texts they transmit-and this is the situation with all of our early texts-it would appear to be self-evident that it is our task to attempt to collect all available evidence, both primary and secondary, and to bring to bear all we can learn about the ways in which texts were transmitted and altered in the hope of being able thus to determine as far as possible what the original form of the text was and how it changed over time. I would like to stress that recovery of the original is, in my view at least, not necessarily the highest, and certainly not the only goal of the text critic. Rather, it is the reconstruction of the history of the text, which is essential for the recovery of the original, but which often includes far more. For it requires, one might say, that we enter into the mind and thought not only of the writer but also of all those who have influenced its transmission. It demands, in addition to the more mechanical and basic skills, sensitivity to historical development, awareness of why and how a text may have been changed-and this means an understanding of the text as a part of the culture of which it forms a part. Rather than making the reconstruction of a single moment of creation our goal, this approach attempts to grasp the development of the text in its entirety. Over and above the individual thinker, the critical study of texts can shed light on Indian culture as something changing and developing.
To be a little more concrete; if we wish to reconstruct the original text of the VS-if one can profitably speak of such a thing-we will need to identify the accretions and changes to the text. In this we are faced by different kinds of problems. We shall have to determine what readings (including omissions and additions) may be purely scribal, arising from unconscious
53 In fact, the problems and disagreements of editors of modern English and American authors should warn us that even in the case of works available in autograph manuscripts or typescripts, it is by no means always possible to arrive at agreement on the precise text to be adopted.
54 Even scholars who work exclusively from printed texts can certainly benefit from studying the transmission of the texts they deal with. For instance, knowing which scripts the manuscripts of a text were written in, together with a grounding in palaeography and codicology, can clearly help in alerting one to corruption and dealing with it.
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