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Interpolations and omissions have been detected in the current Vaiśeşika Sūtra tradition. Mahāmahopadhyāya Dr. Gopinath Kaviraja and Pandit Vira Raghavacharya Siromani have shown many irregularities in the available texts of these Sutras. The former has suggested the means of determination of a more correct Sūtra text by a careful study of all the commentaries and glosses on the Sutras". This being the state of affairs Muni Shri Jambuvijayaji, a profound scholar of Hindu, Buddhist and Jaina logic and philosophy, while editing the Nayacakra of Mallavādi Kṣamāśramaņa found that at many places the citations of the Vaiseṣika Sutras were either not available in the extant text or were available with different readings. But when Muni Shri Punyavijayaji sent to him a manuscript of Candrananda Vṛtti from the Jaisalmer Bhandar, almost all the citations could be traced and the MS was found to be extremely useful. Now when most of all the old commentaries and glosses on the Vaiśeşika Sūtras are lost, this commentary of Candrānanda fortunately takes us very near to the original Sūtrapäṭha.
As already noted above, in 1957, the Mithila Research Institute, Darbhanga, published Vaiśeşika Darśana along with a 13th-14th century commentary. But that Vṛtti is incomplete and since the Sūtrapāṭha is mixed up with the text of the Vṛtti, it is very difficult to separate the Sutrapatha from the Vrtti. Again, it is highly probable that because of the influence of the Navya Nyaya style, the Vṛtti has deviated considerably from the authentic Sutrapāṭha and its original interpretations.
Of the two manuscripts utilized in this edition the manuscript supplied by Muni Shri Punyavijayaji gives the Sutrapāṭha separately which makes it easier to determine the Sūtrapaṭha. The meaning of the Sutras given in the commentary of Candrananda is in a somewhat abridged form. However, since the Vṛtti of Candrānanda is an old commentary composed on the basis of earlier ones, we are fortunate in having in it a comparatively early interpretation of the Sutras. This commentary must have been written sometime after the sixth century, very probably during the 7th century. The Vṛtti of Candrānanda published in this volume is the oldest commentary on the Vaiseṣika Sūtras available at present.
The editor picked up the Sarada script of the Manuscript for the purpose of this edition and became proficient in it. He has also compared in the first two Appendices the older Sütrapaṭha and the current Sūtrapatha. Appendix V gives some new information about the Vaiseṣika Darśana drawn from an old unpublished text, viz. Sarvasiddhantapraveśaka, a MS of which has been discovered at Jaisalmer.
In Appendices No. 6th and 7th the learned editor has thrown considerable light on the history of the Vaiśeşika Darśana, with the help of references from
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