Ideological distortions of MSS

[Peter Freund]

    The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali may not be the ideal text for such a
study.  The text has been preserved rather rigidly by its inclusion in the
body of Vyasa's commentary on the Yoga Sutras.  All of the main published
recensions have Vyasa's commentary as their source, and do not seem to
diverge greatly.  If you compare the many published texts of the Yoga Sutras
you will find that the only divergence stems from disagreement as to which
words and phrases in the body of Vyasa's work are the original sutras, and
which are Vyasa's commentary.
    As has been discussed previously in this forum, there has been
discovered an edition of the Yoga Sutras attributed to Shankara which has a
dozen more sutras, not found in Vyasa's commentary.  But would Shankara, of
unsurpassed intellect,  have to stoop to doctoring any text in order to
accomodate his viewpoint?

    Rather than doctoring the text itself, much simpler and more difficult
to challenge is the process of adjusting the meaning of words.  The drift of
meanings of words over the centuries makes it essential for commentators to
step forward generation after generation to try to reestablish the original
meaning in the light of contemporary understanding.

    There is nevertheless one case where there is evidence of the evolution
of a text--either through actual change in the words, or in the
understanding of the meaning of the words--and that is Surya Siddhanta, an
astronomical text in the field of Jyotish.  Sengupta in his introduction to
Burgess' translation of the Surya Siddhanta, published by Motilal
Banarsidass, 1989,  describes the evidence  from VarAha's Paxca SiddhAntikA
as to the apparent condition of the Surya Siddhanta text in VarAha's time.

Sincerely,

Peter Freund




Dmitri wrote:

> I am pondering the following question:
>
> Was the text of Pata~njali's Yoga Suutra altered in a deliberate fashion
> to accomodate ideological, religious, sholastic, etc. agendas of
> the past 1500 years?
>
> The question, I'd like to ask indologists on this listserv is:
> Is there a known sanskrit MSS of which two versions exists, those
> two versions are different, and the difference might be attributed
> to a deliberate editing of the earlier version to bind the meaning of
> a passage towards a religious, ideological or scholastic dogma?
>
> In particular, I am interested if the coming of Islam to India
> resulted of any re-writing of sacred texts.
>
> Thanks in advance,
>                     Dmitri.