Critical Studies in the Mahabharata (V. S. Sukthankar Memorial Edition, Vol. I) c8: Arjunamiśra
Critical Studies in the Mahābhārata (V. S. Sukthankar Memorial Edition, Vol. I) c8
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Arjunamiśra
c8.1
A commentator of the Mahābhārata who has suffered undeserved neglect at the hands of scholars and publishers alike is Arjunamiśra. Not only is Arjuna’s commentary better than that of Nīlakaṇṭha, his text also is superior, in many respects, to that used or fixed by the Western commentator. And yet Arjuna’s *Dīpikā* has never been published in its entirety¹ and, being difficult of access, is seldom consulted by scholars. HOLTZMANN has devoted a paragraph to him in his compendious work *Das Mahābhārata*, Vol. 3, pp. 67 ff., but WINTERNITZ does not mention him even once in the 130 pages he devotes to the Mahābhārata in his *Geschichte*. He is referred to *en passant* by BROCKHAUS, *ZDMG*, 6. 528 ; by TELANG, *Bhagavadgītā* Translation ; by RAJENDRALAL MITRA, *Notices*, Vols. 5 and 6 ; and in some other manuscripts catalogues.
c8.2
¹ The commentary on the Virāṭaparvan and the Udyogaparvan has been published by the Gujarati Printing Press, Bombay.
c8.3
The version of Arjunamiśra, as I pointed out in the Foreword (p. v) to the first fascicule of the critical edition of the Mahābhārata (1927), is closely allied to the Bengali version. The simple reason for this affinity, not known to me then, is apparently that Arjunamiśra was a native of Bengal, to judge from the extracts from the colophons of his commentary recently published by Mahamahopadhyaya Haraprasada SHASTRI in the *Descriptive Catalogue of Sanskrit Manuscripts of the Asiatic Society of Bengal*, Vol. 5 (1928).
c8.4
The few facts about Arjunamiśra and his commentary that I have been able to glean from the various available sources may be briefly summarized thus. The name of his commentary is variously given as (*Mahā-*) *bhāratārtha-* [566] (*pra*) *dīpikā* and *Bhāratasamgrahadīpikā*. The commentaries on the different Parvans have been handed down singly or in groups of a few Parvans at a time. Complete manuscripts of the commentary exist in Bengal, but even there they are not common. The manuscripts, which are written in Bengali and Devanāgari characters, bear various dates in the seventeenth or later centuries : the earliest hitherto reported date is Saṃvat 1676 (*ca.* A.D. 1620).
c8.5
Arjunamiśra, who styles himself Bhāratācārya in the colophons of the manuscripts of his commentary, was the son of Īśāna, who was a “reciter” (*pāṭhaka* or *pāṭhakarāja*) of the Mahābhārata and who appears to have, like his son, borne the title Bhāratācārya. Arjuna is cited by name, by Nīlakaṇṭha once in his commentary on the Mahābhārata (ad 3. 291. 70) and is, therefore, certainly anterior to Nīlakaṇṭha, who belongs to the third quarter of the seventeenth century.¹ He in turn mentions among his predecessors the commentators Devabodha, Vimalabodha, Śāṇḍilya, Sarvajña-Nārāyaṇa, and he appears to have based his scholium closely on that of Devabodha. He wrote also a commentary on the well-known Vedic hymn Puruṣasūkta, to which he himself refers in the Dīpikā on Mbh. 14. 25. 26. TELANG (op. cit. p. 204) surmises that he is posterior to Śaṃkara, and HOLTZMANN assigns him to the thirteenth or fourteenth century : both without adducing any cogent reasons for their assumptions. Arjuna regarded and has treated the Harivaṃśa as an integral part of the Great Epic, elaborately defending this position : his commentary, therefore, embraces the supplement Harivaṃśa also.
c8.6
¹ PRINTZ, KZ, 44, 70 ff.
c8.7
Arjunamiśra lived in North India, in a town or village on the banks of the Ganges and, according to his own statement, compiled the great commentary on the Mahābhārata under the patronage of one Satyakhāna. [567] Relying on one Bengal Asiatic Society's manuscript examined by him, Haraprasada SHASTRI asserts that Arjuna was a Vārendra Brahman of North Bengal. The Mahamahopadhyaya may indeed be right in this, but I am not wholly convinced. I find it a suspicious circumstance that this word Vārendra occurs only in one place in one manuscript (No. 3422), while it is conspicuous by its absence in the others which contain a similar colophon. There is, however, another word which is often repeated in these colophons but not discussed by the Mahamahopadhyaya and which I think also contains a place-name. The word is spelt in the colophons variously as Campāheṭ(ṭ)iya, Campāheṭhi, Campiheṭika. It is used there as an attribute of Kula. I take the reference to mean that Arjunamiśra's family (kula) belonged to a town or village, called Campāheṭ(ṭ)i. Could this place be identified with certainty, we should have a very definite clue as to Arjunamiśra's provenance. I am tempted to identify it with Campahāti mentioned in the Imperial Gazetteer of India (1885) as a “small village.... 15 miles south-west of Calcutta, in the district of the Twenty-four Pargaṇās, Bengal”; but owing partly to the erratic manner in which proper names are spelt in the Imperial Gazetteer and partly to the lack of sufficient data as to the situation of the place in question, the identification proposed above is necessarily uncertain.
c8.8
Following the example of my predecessors, I have utilized Devanāgarī manuscripts of the commentary of Arjunamiśra and treated his version as a sub-division of the Devanāgarī version. The two Devanāgarī manuscripts I am using for my edition of the Ādiparvan are extremely corrupt. In fact all the manuscripts I have consulted—and they are all Nāgarī manuscripts—have been surprisingly corrupt. Not only that, the text they contain is obviously contaminated from the vulgate text, as evidenced [568] by the glaring discrepancies that exist between the readings of the text and the lemmata in the commentary. This corruption of the Devanāgarī manuscripts I could not understand at first, but is, I cannot but think now, due to their being copies of Bengali originals. It would, therefore, be expedient to secure and use, whenever possible, good old Bengali manuscripts of Arjunamiśra’s commentary, treating his version as an offshoot of the Bengali version. Arjunamiśra certainly seems to belong to the Eastern school of Mahābhārata commentators.
Cites (1)
- Mahābhārata — Vyāsa, Sanskrit