On the Aindra School of Sanskrit Grammarians, their Place in the Sanskrit and Subordinate Literatures c8.14

c8.14

Thus Patañjali says:¹) “Bṛihaspatir Indrāya divyavarshasahasram pratipadoktānām śabdānām śabdapārāyaṇam provāca nā ’ntam jagāma | Bṛihaspati ca pravaktā Indraç ca ’dhyetā, divyam varshasahasram adhyayanakālaḥ | na cā ’ntam jagāma” etc. This is the ‘ideal’ science; to meet actual wants of mortals we have ‘grammar’. A little reflection will show that this view must necessarily hold good in respect of all ‘çāstras’, and hence, that with treatises which profess to come originally by revelation it is not possible to expect an exact reproduction of a primitive text, for there probably never was one; rather, the oldest treatises we have, are to be looked on as the joint work of many generations of teachers and pupils, and the result of much revision. The Indian view is given by Colebrooke²): “It is a received and well grounded opinion of the learned in India that no book is altogether safe from changes and interpolations until it have been commented: but when once a gloss has been published, no fabrication could afterwards succeed; because the perpetual commentary notices every passage, and, in general, explains every word.” But there are comparatively few such commentaries, and very few of a remote date, and there is often reason to believe that these have caused in effect, the loss of different recensions³), which not being protected by such a useful aid, have fallen into neglect. As I have already remarked, such commentaries⁴) often originated new errors in addition to those already existing in the texts.