A History of Sanskrit Literature c29.s2.19

c29.s2.19

The *Mahābhāṣya*¹ is interesting stylistically as giving us a lively picture of the mode of discussion of the day. A question is posed; an Ācāryadeçīya deals with it, not altogether incompetently but not quite satisfactorily, and an Ācārya solves the issue. The style, therefore, is lively, simple, animated, and as in Açoka's inscriptions—possibly a confirmation of the date proposed—not rarely do we find the question 'Wherefore?', 'How?', or 'What?' put and then answered. Proverbial expressions and references to matters of everyday life are introduced and serve both to enliven the discussions and to give us valuable hints of the conditions of life and thought in the time of Patañjali, who thus is a source of information for religious and social history as well as for literature. A good example of his style is afforded by a famous reference² to the Mauryas: Pāṇini has a rule providing for the addition of the suffix *ka* to a name to denote an image of the person, but adds that it is dropped if the image is used to secure a livelihood (*jīvikārthe*) and is not vendible (*apanya*). Patañjali says: *apanya ity ucyate tatredaṁ na sidhyati Çivaḥ Skando Viçākha iti. kiṁ kāraṇam? Mauryair hiraṇyārthibhir arcāḥ prakalpitāḥ. bhavet tāsu na syāt. yās tv etāḥ saṁprati pūjārthās tāsu bhaviṣyati.* 'The difficulty is raised, with regard to Pāṇini's proviso that images are not to be vendible, that on this doctrine the forms Çiva, Skanda, Viçākha, are incorrect. Why is that? Because the Mauryas, in their greed for money, used as means images of the gods (i.e. they bartered them, so that the forms should be Çivaka, &c.). (Final answer.) Very well, granted that the rule for dropping *ka* does not apply to those images of the Mauryas; still as regards images now used for purposes of worship it does apply.’ It will be seen that the amount which must be understood to make such passages intelligible is rather a strain on the reader,¹ and in point of fact the *Mahābhāṣya* evidently gave serious trouble to later students. Bhartṛhari, who died *c.* 651, wrote a commentary on it which is all but lost, and also the *Vākyapadīya*,² in three books of verse, which mainly deals with questions of the philosophy of speech; a difficult work, it contains much evidence of thorough knowledge of contemporary philosophical disputes. Kaiyaṭa’s³ commentary on the *Mahābhāṣya*, which may belong to the twelfth century but which tradition places earlier, borrows largely from Bhartṛhari, and is itself commented on by the voluminous writer Nāgojī Bhaṭṭa (*c.* 1700). Both show that they often had as much trouble to understand Patañjali as have we.