Once Again Vaisesika Sutra 3 1 13

Author(s): Johannes Bronkhorst
Publisher: Johannes Bronkhorst

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ONCE AGAIN VAISEŞIKA SUTRA 3.1.13*
Johannes BRONKHORST, Lausanne
The study of philosophical Sūtra works is beset with difficulties. Apart from the condensed style, which makes them sometimes difficult to understand even where no other problems intervene, we often have reason to suspect that these texts may have undergone interpolations and other modifications. In practice this means that, in order to understand a Sūtra text, we should know as much as possible of its history, of the vicissitudes it has undergone from its beginning until today.
Such detailed knowledge of the history of individual Sūtra texts is not normally available. This is the reason why we have to be content, in most cases, with a global understanding of the kind of influences that Sūtra texts undergo. Here we will concentrate on one such influence, viz., the one exerted by the commentary or commentaries that accompany them. It is known that Sūtra texts are frequently extracted from commentaries that contain them. During this process of extraction mistakes can easily creep into the Sūtra text: a sütra may be overlooked; or, more probably, a statement properly belonging to the commentary may be taken to be a sūtra. Confusions of this kind were facilitated by the fact that commentaries of around the middle of the first millennium C.E. often fail to contain clear indications as to what is sutra, and what commentary. The use of the socalled Vārttika style could not but add to the confusion.
The extraction of a Sūtra text from a commentary could lead to an incorrect result in other ways, too. There is evidence to show that commentators of around the middle of the first millennium occasionally felt free to comment upon the sūtras in an order which deviates slightly from the 'correct' one. In itself this need not be looked upon as an attempt to change the order of the sūtras. But whatever the intentions of these commentators, the effect of such a procedure might very well be that the Sūtra text which someone else subsequently extracted from such a commentary would have some of the sūtras in a modified order.
Usually Indian Sūtra texts are handed down to us in one single 'line of descent', at least where their early period is concerned. It is only on rare
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I thank T. Tillemans for help and advice. See Bronkhorst, 1992, for a brief survey.