[INDOLOGY] Thakkana again

Wed Oct 16 16:04:17 UTC 2019

Dear all,

I think some explanations concerning the origin of the reading “śrīmacchakunaº” are due. It is attested NOT in a Śāradā MS, but in a printed version of the text (it is the only printed “edition” I am aware of; I have uploaded it here). It is completely unclear, what sources the editor was actually using, because the only thing he himself said about it was this:
	“asya granthasya nirmāṇasamaye ṭīkātrayam idaṃ śrīveṅkateśvaramudraṇālayādhipatisakāśād evopalabdham āsīd ataḥ punarmudraṇādisarvādhikāraṃ tebhya eva samarpaye iti” (p. 6).
To this, his son added that these “three old and authoritative commentaries” were obtained by “the proprietors of Shri Venktashwar Press […] from the well known scholar […] Yadavji Tricumji” (pp. 3–4). So my guess is that the editor was given a Marathī transcript of some MSS and entrusted with the task “to rearrange the misplaced comments, replace or explain obscure readings, and give the whole a systematic appearance” (p. 4). Whatever may be the case, according to our survey of MS-catalogues, the only Śāradā MSS of the text, which are preserved till date (in Bikaner), do not cover the concerned portion of the text.

Furthermore, as I mentioned earlier, the overall quality of the printed text is rather poor. To give you but one obvious example, on p. 5 (under paº), there are two verses quoted to explain the meaning of “atha”. Of these, the first verse (I’m not going to discuss its reading, viz a bit odd as well) is not found in our oldest textual witness — that is, in the Tibetan translation. And, in fact, this verse is grep-able (thanks to Dhaval Patel!!!) in Maheśvara’s Viśvaprakāśa (an authorial kośa- dated to the beginning of the 12th ctr.). This brings us to another important point that misreadings are not the only sources of textual corruptions. Therefore, I mentioned earlier that it seemed likely to me that “srīmacchakuna-” could be an intentional “improvement” of a “non-sensical” reading “srīmatthakkana-”. This “improvement” could have been introduced by the editor of the above publication (in which case we are lucky, because it is still present in his sources (?)) or sometimes much earlier in the transmission of the text.

On the other hand, I think that Prof. Slaje’s concerns about Candranandana's use of his patron’s opprobrious name (though, surely, a king of any rang  would have more than just a single forename) at the very beginning of his work are to be taken very serious. I wonder in this connection if it is possible to understand “Thakkana“ as “just a name” — that is, not as a MIA variant of Skt “sthagana-”, but, perhaps, as a personal name having a different origin altogether?

Let me also remind you that the very identification of Candra’s patron with Thakkana is purely hypothetical (though I think that the cooccurrence of Tha ga na, sgrib byed/med and Rājataraṅginī’s mention of Thakkana that also perfectly fits the proposed time of Candra is rather compelling). There are also Sanskrit MSS of the text waiting to be checked that may provide a solution (it happens so that Dr Madhu Parameshwaran from Kerala and myself are currently editing a later portion of the text, and we are certainly planing to extend our effort to the whole text in the future).

On a different note.
> If otherwise, could anyone supply evidence for a maṅgala or a dedicatory verse containing unfavourable words or ominous names?
not an “ominous name”, but here comes a maṅgalaśloka- by someone Suvarṇarekha (perhaps, a Bengali author, surely pre-Durghaṭavṛtti — that is, pre 1172 CE). It’s a commentary on the Kirātārjunīya and it starts right away with a “duḥ-”. I must confess that I have been puzzled by this fact for quite some time now (is there something auspicious that escapes me?!). The only explanation I came up with so far is that “durbodha-” at the beginning of the commentary needs to be connected with “vidhuḥkham” (at the end of one of the final verses of the same commentary), so that the whole text could be seen as a path leading from one to the other. Anyway, the (a)maṅgala- reads as follows:

 durbodhavāgvivaraṇāni kirātakāvye nānārthabhāṃji vidadhāti suvarṇarekhaḥ /
 tadbhāvatattvam avagamya vimarśayantaḥ santaḥ subhāṣitadhanā manasā vahantu //

best,
Andrey
On Oct 16, 2019 23:00 +0900, Roland Steiner via INDOLOGY <indology at list.indology.info>, wrote:
> Walter Slaje has asked me to forward a further message to the list.
>
>
> * * *
>
> Having been disconnected from the list for a while, it may have escaped my notice if the reading -chakuna- has been adopted text-critically from among other variants, or if it is an only reading from a unique manuscript. That would certainly change the starting point of this discussion.
>
> We can of course never exclude the possibility that the syllables under consideration were physically damaged in the exemplar a scribe had had in front of him and which he supplied in his own copy with a wording (“śakuna”) that seemed reasonable to him. Then however, and without further evidence, anything could be explained by wild guesses of that sort. Moreover, an unsubstantiated assumption that ccha-ku-na was mistaken for ttha-kka-na is, as I should like to repeat, baseless in the Śāradā script. I am not prone to consider such an argument as valid until its likelihood has been more convincingly demonstrated. For, what other script should we suppose in use in the Greater Kashmir region in the tenth century, if not Śāradā?
>
> The Śāhi ruler Thakkana “may have been some small chief in a neighbouring hill region“, to quote Stein on RT 6.230. Thakkana was conquered and captured after an invasion of Kashmiri forces in his “country, which is difficult of access on account of its streams and mountains“ (Stein). The difficulty of access mentioned here points to the Dardic territories north of the Kashmir valley proper, where Hindu Śāhis had been ruling, too. There were indeed no safe and easy passes to cross the mountain range to the north. Hence, the Greater Kashmir region is our most likely candidate, which is the homeland of the Śāradā script.
>
> As to my hypothesis that śakuna may have deliberately been used instead of thakkana by the author himself with a view to avoiding an inauspicious name in the beginning, a beginning which is by all means supposed to be auspicious, let me add that he was writing at the court in the company of contemporaries who certainly knew him as a dependant of his patron quite well. Sure, at their time, the audience could immediately savour the applaudable elegance with which he had turned the unhappily named Thakkana into, and immortalized him as, a Śakuna king (by which he won his favour).
>
> If otherwise, could anyone supply evidence for a maṅgala or a dedicatory verse containing unfavourable words or ominous names?
>
> Until counterevidence, would someone on this list earnestly believe that a medieval Indian author might have addressed his patron as “illustrious liar king”?
>
> Thank you again for your attention,
> WS
>
> * * *
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