A History of Sanskrit Literature c27.s2.3

c27.s2.3

The style of the Bhāṣyas undergoes a clear development; Çaṅkara, for instance, is more advanced than the *Mahābhāṣya* on the grammar of Pāṇini or the Bhāṣya of Vātsyāyana on the *Nyāya Sūtra*. We pass from a reproduction of a discussion to an essay or lecture, and later still is developed the very stiff, if scientific, philosophical style which appears equally in the hand-books of poetics and in such sciences as philosophy and law. The essence¹ of it lies in the insistence on the use of nouns only, verbs being practically eliminated, and in the pregnant employment of particles and of case relations, together with the use of compounds, sometimes of great length. It may be admitted that it is possible to attain great precision in this manner, for in a technical subject-matter compounds can be used so rigidly as to be clear in sense, even when long and complex, but on the other hand it is impossible to regard such products as literature. The Sūtras also have a serious effect on all future work, for they are normally regarded as definitive, and therefore not to be altered, checking development in the substance of the science. A partial way out was found in the case of grammar, where Vārttikas grew up to correct or modify the Sūtras of Pāṇini, but the term Vārttika is not applied in the case of other sciences, though we have in Vātsyāyana occasional sentences which might be deemed Vārttikas to the *Nyāya Sūtra*.² On the other hand we come here and there in philosophic works upon Sūtras which are not preserved in our Sūtra texts.