The Silence of the Commentaries: Pradesah in the Text of the Kasikavrtti.

• Author: Kulkarni, Malhar
• Position: Critical essay

As is well known, the Kasikavrtti (KV) is the earliest extant rule-by-rule commentary on Panini's famous grammar of Sanskrit, the Astadhyayi (A). It was probably composed in the seventh century CE. Two major commentaries on it are known--the Nyasa (Ny) from the eighth century and the Padamanjari (Pm), most likely from the eleventh century.

What is less well known, however, is that some features very familiar to any student of the KV appear not to be met with in the two commentaries. This article will show that the sentence "Xprades'ah--X... ity evamadayah" (where X is the sanjha under discussion at a particular rule of the A) is not read in the Ny and Pm. This has consequences for our understanding of the textual transmission of the KV.

Since the KV was first printed in 1876, throughout all the printed editions up to 1969 it seemed to be a text that was one, homogeneous, synchronic composition with very little room for variations and heterogeneity. The 1969 Hyderabad edition of the KV presented for the first time the text of the KV together with an apparatus containing information collected from eight manuscript sources and gave rise to the thought that there is an ample amount of variation that could illuminate the composition of the text. This edition could not, however, show whether there existed any stages of development in this process of the text's composition. Kulkarni 2005 and 2012 presented evidence and argued that the composition of the KV can be shown to have undergone various stages of development. Kulkarni 2005 presented a sample critical edition of the KV on A 2.2.6 and asserted that a varttika statement was added to the text of the KV on this sutra in the nineteenth century. Kulkarni 2012 studied the composition of a list of words, called a gana, as stated in A 2.2.31, and established that this list of words can be shown to have come into existence in various stages, namely, (i) pre-Ny, (ii) post-Ny and pre-Pm, and finally (iii) post-Pm. These stages of development can be shown to exist on the basis of evidence available to us in the form of commentarial statements, quotations of the KV available in the later Paninian grammatical literature, and manuscripts of the KV. Kulkarni 2012 concluded that the source of the extant manuscript material can be shown to have existed in the pre-Pm period. Kulkarni et al. 2016 demonstrated that the current manuscript tradition of the KV can be shown to have close relations with a version of the text of the KV that was available to the Ny as well as to the Pm.

In this article we focus on the sanjna sutras in the A and the KV on them (as found in the printed editions), and we present evidence from both commentaries, the Ny and the Pm, as well as manuscripts of the KV. Our main focus is adhyaya 1, pada 1 of the A, but we have also taken into account the sanjna sutras in other parts of the A and have collected the comments of the Ny and the Pm on them. As far as the manuscript material is concerned, we have used it wherever it was available.

I

The KV on sixty-five of the sanjna sutras in the A displays the pradesa sentence, as outlined above. The sentence does not occur in the KV on all sanjnd sutras; for example, it does not occur in the KV on the sanjna sutra A 1.1.73 vrddhir yasydcam adis tad vrddham. Out of these sixty-five sutras, twenty occur in A 1.1. (1) Our main focus is on the KV on these twenty sutras. Below we present the text of the KV on A 1.1.1 as a sample, analyze it, and show how it is structured.

A 1.1.1. vrddhir ad aic (2)

1.1.1.1 sahjha 1.1.1.2 sahjha 1.1.1.3 sahjha In the text just presented we have added two sets of numbers, standard Western ("Hindu-Arabic") and Devanagari. The numbers in the format 1.1.1.1 indicate the meaningful, functional parts in the text of the KV. The numbers in Devanagari were added at the beginning of what we will call "sentences." (3) Thus structurally there are three parts of the text of the KV presented above and there are ten sentences in this text.

The first three sentences form the first part of this text, the next six the second part, and the last, the tenth sentence, the third part. The first part involves identifying the sanjna and the sanjnin (in sentence 1) and explaining a detail of the wording of the sutra (in sentences 2 and 3). The second part involves actual examples of words in which a result of the application of a rule involving the present sanjna is visible. Thus sentences 4 to 7 are examples where the vowels a, ai, and au, which are effected by rules containing the word vrddhi. are visible (tadbhavita). (4) Sentences 8 and 9 are examples of a, which is not effected by any rule but is still an example of the present sanjna (atadbhavita). The third part of the text provides examples of the surras in which the present sanjna is used by Panini.

All the passages in the KV on the sanjna sutras have the same general structure. Let...