kArikA cont.

[selindqu at rainbow.uchicago.edu]

I would like to thank people for their detailed comments.  Here are a
couple other things to toss into the ring.

aklujkar at unixg.ubc.ca states:

>Now that he has
>clarified that he is interested in the designation of texts as kaarikaa
>the response given by Prof. Cardona applies. In other words, there is no
>real problem.  A text consisting of kaarikaas can be called  '--kaarikaa'.
>The plural and the singular make no significant difference in such
>contexts.

and

>I would be surprised if at least some of the Saa.mkhya-kaarikaa
>commentaries do not have sentences in which a dual or plural form of
>kaarikaa is used and in which the composition intended cannot be anything
>other than two verses or more than two verses of Ii;svara-k.r.s.na, that
>is, a part of the work we call Saa.mkhya-kaarikaa.

This is true (I thank Prof. Cardona for pointing out the Panini reference),
but my conern is not whether it is a 'problem' for a text to be named
something-I am asking what it means to name a text something.  That is,
there seems to me something more at work in terming a text a kArikA, rather
than just the fact that it just consists of kArikAs (a lot of texts do, but
are not named that).  If someone knows otherwise please let me know, but it
DOES appear to make a difference of whether it is plural or singular (not
grammatically, of course, but as a more 'technically used' term).  I do not
know about the Sam.khya kArikA, but the Gaud.padIya kArikA is not referred
to as a text in the plural-perhaps the singular is used to denote genre
(with the understanding that it means verses in the plural) whereas the
plural (and dual, obviously) are to refer to groups of passages, but not
the text as a whole.  All plural references I find with the Gaud.padIya
kArikA as 'kArikA's are referring to limited groups of verses and not the
text as a whole.  This is what I meant by a difference a number.

>It is true only in a limited sense that the Saa.mkhya-kaarikaa is an
>independent, non-commentarial text. The work itself declares that it is a
>summary of the .Sa.s.ti-tantra.

Is this text employed throughout the kArikA?  The reason I ask is that the
mAn.d.Ukya upanis.ad is, as far as I can tell, always circulated within the
Gaud.padIya kArikA.  Hence the foundation of Bhattacharya's argument that
the upanis.ad was written after the kArikA (i.e. that it is not an
independent text, but a later addition.  This does not seem possible
because it is known as a fact that Samkara's immediate student saw them as
two texts and differentiates this kArikA as human-written and the upanis.ad
as sruti (which is most likely how Samkara saw it, and it is unlikely that
if the text was written after the kArikA that it would have attained the
status of sruti in such a short time)).  The GK still strikes me as an
interesting situation regarding the nature of a 'text' (and
intertextuality) - both in the post-modern and in the classical sense.

> I shall only state at this point that the reference of 'Aagama'
>in  'Aagama-;saastra' is more likely to be the body of Brahmanical and
>Buddhist Aagama literature, that is, the tradionally handed down knowledge
>in the Vedas etc., the scriptures or canon (approximately speaking). The
>Gau.da-paada-kaarikaas purport to give us the instruction (;saastra) based
>on or derived from this literature. They constitute a comment or commentary
>in that sense.

I do not disagree with this definition (in fact, it is one of the more
concise ones that I have come across), but (a) the earliest manuscripts do
not refer to the whole text this way (b) only a couple of the later ones
do, but they are quite late.  All manuscripts, though, refer to the first
chapter as the Agama prakarana (which works fine with your definition
because it is there that the upanis.ad is placed.  It still seems
interesting that the whole text later assumes the title Agama).  My
suggestion still seems tenable: after Samkara...after the text gained
popularity and was thought to be an authoritative interpretation of the
upanis.ad...then it was termed the Agamasastra.  More manuscript work, of
course, needs to be done...but I am interested if it could be disproven and
I do not see how your definition does that.

Steve

--
Steven Lindquist
University of Chicago
--