पृष्ठम्:ADictionaryOfSanskritGrammarByMahamahopadhyayaKashinathVasudevAbhyankar.djvu/२९७

विकिस्रोतः तः
पुटमेतत् सुपुष्टितम्
महाभाष्य
महाभाष्य
281

Sutras of Panini, it has remained supremely authoritative and fur- nishes the last and final word in all places of doubt; cf. the remarks इति भाष्ये स्थितम्, इत्युक्तं भाष्ये, इत्युक्तमाकरे etc. scattered here and there in several Vyaakarana treatises form- ing, in fact, the patent words used by commentators when they finish any chain of arguments. Besides commenting on the Sutras of Paanini, Patanjali, the author, has raised many other grammatical issues and after discussing them fully and thoroughly, given his conclusions which have become the final dicta in those matters. The work, in short, has become an encyclopedic one and hence aptly called खनि or आकर. The work is spread over such a wide field of grammatical studies that not a single grammatical issue appears to have been left out. The author appears to have made a close study of the method and explanations of the Sutras of Paanini given at various academies all over the country and incorpo- rated the gist of those studies given in the form of Varttikas at the various places, in his great work. He has thoroughly scruti- nized and commented upon the Vaarttikas many of which he has approved, some of which he has rejected, and a few of which he has supplemented. Besides the Vaarttikas which are referred to above, he has quoted stanzas which verily sum up the arguments in explanation of the difficult sutras, composed by his predecessors. There is a good reason to believe that there were small glosses or commenta- ries on the Sutras of Paanini, written by learned teachers at the various


academies, and the Vaarttikas form- ed in a way, a short pithy summary of those glosses or Vrttis. . The explanation of the word वृत्तौ साधु वार्तिकम् given by Kaiyata may be quoted in support of this point. Kaiyata has at one place even stated that the argument of the Bhaasyakaara is in consonance with that of Kuni, his predecessor. The work is divided into eightyfive sections which are given the name of lesson or आह्लिक by the author, pro- bably because they form the subject matter of one day's study each, if the student has already made a thorough study of the subject and is very sharp in intelligence. cf. अह्ला निर्वृत्तम् आह्लिकम्, (the explanation given by the commentatiors).Many commentary works were written on this magnum opus of Patanjali during the long period of twenty centuries upto this time under the names टीका, टिप्पणी, दीपिका, प्रकाशिका, व्याख्या, रत्नावली, स्फूर्ति, वृत्ति, प्रदीप, व्याख्यानं and the like, but only one of them the 'Pradipa' of कैयटी- पाध्याय, is found complete. The learned commentary by Bhartr- hari, written a few centuries before the Pradipa, is available only in a fragment and that too, in a manu- script form copied down from the original one from time to time by the scribes very carelessly. Two other commentaries which are comparatively modern, written by Naarayanasesa and Nilakantha are available but they are also incom- plete and in a manuscript form. Possibly Kaiyatabhatta's Pradipa threw into the background the commentaries of his predecessors and no grammarian after Kaiyata dared write a commentary supe- rior to Kaiyata's Pradipa or, if he