Commentaries

[ashok.aklujkar]

Dear Patrick,

In the histories of Vyakarana, Mimamsa, Vedanta etc., scholars have noted
the names of many early commentators whose works have been lost. See, for
example, Yudhisthira Mimamsaka's Hindi history of Skt grammar and statements
like Skanda-Mahe;svara's (p. 4): te.saa.m [= nigha.n.tuunaa.m]
vyaakhyaanaartha.m ... yaaskasya bhaa.syam. tasya puurva-.tiikaakaarair
barbara-svaami-bhagavad-durga-prabh.rtibhir vistare.na vyaakhyaatasya ...

In the pre-printing transmission of literature, the rate of losing works
must be  higher, for it is more expensive, in terms of time and labor, to
prepare a manuscript book than to prepare a printing book, apart from the
difficulties involved in ascertaining where a copy of a certain text one may
be interested in is preserved. The survival of a hand-written text was more
likely to be an exceptional phenomenon than a generally experienced or
expected phenomenon. A greater pressure to replace older texts by newer
texts subsuming their content must also have existed in the situation.

ashok aklujkar



From: Patrick Olivelle <jpo at UTS.CC.UTEXAS.EDU>
Date: Fri, 25 Apr 2008 10:43:36 -0500

I wonder whether you can resolve a question regarding the Sanskrit
commentarial tradition. We have early examples in the grammatical
tradition of Katyayana and Patanjali. But then I see a hiatus until
about the fifth century, with Sabara; then we get a continuous series
of commentaries in the philosophical traditions, Mimamsa, and from
about the 8th century in Dharmasastra. Besides perhaps the Buddhist
authors, do we have examples of commentaries after Patanjali and
before Sabara?