Critical Studies in the Mahabharata (V. S. Sukthankar Memorial Edition, Vol. I) c7.s2.t2.40

c7.s2.t2.40

The situation is somewhat clearer and the facts better capable of demonstration in the case of the other great mediaeval commentator Śaṃkarācārya. In many cases when the readings of the Mahābhārata verses and stanzas cited by him [180] differ from those of the Bombay and Calcutta editions, I was able to identify Śaṃkarācārya’s readings in the Southern MSS. Being a Southerner, he had naturally studied and cited from the Southern recension of the Mahābhārata. It is quite clear that he was not going to work through all available MSS. and establish the original reading of the numerous Mahābhārata stanzas cited by him in the course of his voluminous commentaries. Therefore his citations, although of far greater antiquity than the oldest of our extant Mahābhārata MSS., do not necessarily give us in every case the “original” readings. Śaṃkara’s testimony applies to and affects mainly the version, or the recension used or cited by him; and that was probably the Southern recension in its Malayālam version. Even in the time of the Ācārya the Northern MSS. must have read differently in places, as they do now, because the divagation of the recensions must be assumed to be far older than the epoch of the great Vedantist.