Dear Dhaval Patel,

If you just want to get an idea of what is in the various commentaries, any edition will do. But if you need to do serious research, commentaries that are well edited and accurately printed are necessary. In the case of the Vyāsa commentary, several editions are available. About the early editions, here is what James Haughton Woods wrote in the Preface to his 1914 English translation (p. xi):

"The most accessible and the most carefully elaborated of these books is the one published in the Ānandāçrama Series and edited by Kāçīnātha Shāstrī Āgāçe. Variants from twelve manuscripts, mostly southern, are printed at the foot of each page; and Bhojadeva's Vṛtti is appended; also the text of the sūtras by itself and an index thereto. Another edition, in the Bombay Sanskrit Series, by Rājarām Shāstrī Bodas, is also an excellent piece of work. I have, however, made use of the edition by Svāmi Bālarāma (Calcutta, Saṁvat 1947, A.D. 1890; reprinted in Benares A.D. 1908) because it is based on northern manuscripts and because of the valuable notes in the editor's ṭippaṇa."

The edition by Svāmi Bālarāma was very hard to find. I finally had a friend make a photocopy of the 1908 reprint at the Harvard University Library, apparently the copy previously used by Woods. The Ānandāśrama Series edition has been reprinted several times, but the reprints are re-typeset, introducing new typographical errors. So I photocopied the original 1904 edition at the University of Chicago Library. The original 1892 Bombay Sanskrit Series edition was also hard to find in North America, but I was able to photocopy it from the American Oriental Society Library at the Yale University Library. Scans of all three are posted here, along with a few other commentaries on the Yogasūtras: http://prajnaquest.fr/blog/sanskrit-texts-3/sanskrit-hindu-texts/

Since the Ānandāśrama Series edition was edited by Kāśīnātha Śāstrī Āgāśe from twelve manuscripts, giving variant readings in footnotes, it is in effect a critical edition. However, the first critical edition that was called such is that by Vimala Karnatak, Pātañjala-Yoga-Darśanam, four volumes, Varanasi: Banaras Hindu University & Ratna Publications, 1992. It includes the commentaries by Vyāsa, Vācaspati-miśra, and Vijñāna-bhikṣu. It also includes her own Hindi exposition.

More recently the first volume of a critical edition by Philipp Maas was published: Samādhipāda: das erste Kapitel des Pātañjalayogaśāstra zum ersten Mal kritish ediert = The first chapter of the Pātañjalayogaśāstra for the first time critically edited, Aachen: Shaker, 2006. This is a very thorough critical edition of the Yogasūtras and Vyāsa's commentary, together forming the Pātañjalayogaśāstra, using all available sources. We anxiously await further volumes of this definitive critical edition.

Best regards,

David Reigle

Colorado, U.S.A.