The Vaiyakaranasiddhantabhusana of Kaundabhatta, part 1, with the Niranjani Commentary by Ramyatna Shukla and Prakasa Explanatory Notes by K. V. Ramakrishnamacharyulu. Critically edited by K. V. RAMAKRISHNAMACHARYULU. South Asian Perspectives, no. 6; Shree Somnath Sanskrit University Shastragrantha Series, no. 2. Pondichery: INSTITUT FRANCAIS DE PONDICHERY; Veraval, Gujarat: SHREE SOMNATH SANSKRIT UNIVERSITY, 2015. Pp. xl + 592. Rs. 1200, [euro]52.

Kaundabhatta's Vaiyakaranasiddhantabhusana "The ornament of the conclusions of the grammarians," also known by the shorter title Vaiyakaranabhusana "The ornament of the grammarians," is a commentary written in about 1600 on Bhattoji Diksita's Vaiyakaranamatonmajjana "Emergence of the views of the grammarians," a short work consisting of seventy-two verses that describe the conclusions of the grammarians concerning the semantics of parts of speech. Kaundabhatta, Bhattoji Diksita's nephew, in this work and in his shorter Vaiyakaranasiddhantabhusanasara "Essence of the ornament of the conclusions of the grammarians," elaborates the positions indicated briefly by his uncle, articulates competing positions espoused by Naiyayikas and Mimamsakas, and systematically argues against them.

The disciplines of Vyakarana, Nyaya, and Mimamsa all have long histories of analysis of language and of arguments with each other concerning its semantics. The discipline of Nyaya, founded upon the Nyayasutra of Gautama and principally concerned with epistemology, evaluates modes of evidence including the testimony of a trusted, benevolent witness (aptavacana). Karmamimarhsa, founded on the Purvamimamsasutras of Jaimini and principally concerned with the exegesis of ritual texts, is engaged in determining the purport of injunctions concerning how to perform Vedic ceremonies. Vyakarana, based primarily on the Astadhyayl of Panini, is principally concerned with the systematic analysis of language. Panini's work, consisting of about four thousand sutras, accounts for speech forms by deriving them from basic elements by the addition of affixes and augments and morphophonemic replacements under semantic and cooccurrence conditions. Yet in doing so, the work associates parts of speech with the semantic conditions stated as grounds for the introduction of affixes provided in the course of the derivation of speech forms. The disciplines of Nyaya and Mimamsa in contrast are directly concerned with the comprehension of given speech forms, not with their production. Bhattoji Diksita and his nephew Kaundabhatta respond to the views expressed by Naiyayikas and Mimarhsakas by reformulating the association of speech forms with semantic conditions stated by the tradition of Paninian grammar in terms of cognition. The discussions of these three disciplines in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries constitute a sophisticated cognitive science concerned with the structure of verbal cognition, the cognition that arises from understanding speech.

Modern cognitive science, which grew out of behaviorism with its inherent scepticism regarding meaning and anything else not directly observable by the five senses, is alternately concerned either with brain mechanisms, or with word order, phrase structure, and syntactic dependency, both of which approaches limit their objects to those observable by the senses in accordance with a materialistic outlook. Unlike modern cognitive science, Indian cognitive science readily accepts mental conception as the primary topic of its investigation. Indian cognitive science takes the structure of cognition in speakers of the language as the primary object of investigation and considers which elements are primary in cognition and which are dependent upon them. Speech forms that give rise to these elements in the cognition of the speakers come into consideration as the causes of various elements of cognition.

Hardly surprising is what each of the disciplines of Nyaya and Mimamsa considers to be the principal element of cognition. Nyaya, a discipline that accepts God as creator of the world and accepts individual souls as both agents of their actions and enjoyers of results, considers the conscious subject possessed of effort (krti), denoted by the nominative in an active construction, to be primary in verbal cognition. In contrast, Karmamimarhsa, which accepts Vedic texts as authorless (apauruseya) and is principally concerned with the injunctions to perform ritual acts, considers the creative force (bhavana) denoted by injunctive affixes in verbal forms to be principal in verbal cognition. Grammarians, who must evaluate statements as well as injunctions and who cannot help but observe the principal function of the verb in a Sanskrit sentence, accept the action (kriya) denoted by the verbal root (dhatu) as the principal element in verbal cognition. Yet the story is more complex than this since action has two components: the activity itself (vyapara) and the specific result of that activity called its result (phala). Kaundabhatta considers the former always to be principal in verbal cognition, while Nagesa, who composed similar texts concerned with verbal cognition shortly after Kaundabhatta, considers the phala to be principal in a passive construction.

The Vaiyakaranasiddhantabhusana considers in fourteen sections every aspect of verbal cognition of nominals as well as verbs, inflectional terminations as well as bases, derivational affixes as well as roots. Yet the first section, the Dhatvakhyatasamanyarthanirnaya "Determination of the general meaning of verbs and verbal roots," occupies a third of the work and concerns the most important issues. Besides what is principal in verbal cognition, this section considers many other issues, such as what the nature of the relation between a speech form and its cognition is, whether roots such as as 'is', bhu 'be', and stha 'stand, stay' denote activity, what the difference between the semantics of finite verbs and action nouns is, what the relation between a complex activity and its components is, the nature of the agent and direct object as the loci of the activity and its result and how they and their properties are made known, what the nature of the time of activity is and how it is made known, what verbal terminations and stem-forming affixes make known, whether real-world suitability is a factor in verbal cognition, and what the cognition of negation is. Kaundabhatta considers the views of followers of Mimamsakas such as Kumarila Bhatta and Mandana Misra and both ancient (praclna) and modern (navya) Naiyayika views such as those of Raghunatha Siromani.

Several scholars have edited and translated parts of the seventeenth-and-eighteenth century cognitive science treatises that deal extensively with verbal cognition. These include Deshpande (1992), Gune (1978), and Jha (1997, 1998), who produced English translations of sections of Kaundabhatta's Vaiydkaranabhusana, Joshi (1960, 1967), who translated parts of the Vaiyakaranabhusanasara, Das (1990), who edited and translated the whole Vaiyakaranabhusanasara, and Cardona (n.d.), who is currently editing and translating Nagesa's Paramalaghumanjusa. Subha Rao (1969) describes the theories of verbal cognition of the major Indian schools of thought, Joshi (2015) has written several articles on Kaundabhatta's thought including on Nirnayas 3, 5, and 7, and Rathore (1988) has written a study of the topics in the Vaiyakaranabhusanasara.

A reliable critical edition of Kaundabhatta's Vaiyakaranasiddhantabhusana had yet to be published. Previous editions of the text include Sastrin (1900) and Trivedin (1915). The former relied on just two manuscripts, the latter on five others, later collating another four. Ramakrishnamacharyulu's edition utilizes thirty-one additional manuscripts for a total of forty-two in four different scripts, the oldest of which is dated 1647, possibly within the lifetime of Kaundabhatta himself, and which was not available to previous editors. The edition reveals numerous improved significant readings often giving the exact opposite sense of readings in previous editions. Despite the availability of several commentaries on Kaundabhatta's shorter work, the Vaiydkaranasiddhantabhusanasara, no commentary was hitherto available on the more detailed Vaiyakaranasiddhantabhusana. The French Institute commissioned Ramyatna Shukla to provide the much needed commentary in his Nirahjani, which helps elucidate and identify the various views represented, and K. V. Ramakrishnamacharyulu supplies additional extensive explanatory notes at numerous points in his Prakasa. While critical notes are keyed to Devanagari numerals, Ramakrishnamacharyulu's explanations are keyed to modern Hindu-Arabic numerals. The volume is printed in clear Devanagari typeface and is supplied with extensive introductory comments in Sanskrit by both the editor and commentator. The one drawback of the edition is that the same typeface is used for both the text and the commentary; however, confusion can be avoided with some attention to the horizonal line and the presence of the Devanagari numerals indicating critical notes. The edition sets a new standard for the text of Kaundabhatta's work and for this one must be grateful to the learned editor, the erudite commentator, and the resourceful French Institute.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cardona, George, ed. In preparation. Ndgesabhatta's Vaiyakaranasiddhantaparamalaghumahjusa: Critically Edited with an Annotated English Translation.

Das, Karunasindhu. 1990. A Paninian Approach to Philosophy of Language: Kaundabhatta's Vaiyakaranabhusanasara Critically Edited and Translated into English. Calcutta: Sanskrit Pustak Bhandar.

Deshpande, Madhav. 1992. The Meaning of Nouns: Semantic Theory in Classical and Medieval India = Namartha-nirnaya of Kaundabhatta. Studies of Classical India, vol. 13. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. [Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Pennsylvania, 1972.] [Rpt. New Delhi: D.K. Printworld, 2007.]

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Joshi, Shivaram Dattatray, ed. and tr. 1960. Kaunda Bhatta on the Meaning of Sanskrit Verbs: An English Translation and Annotation of the Vaiyakaranabhusanasdra, Chapter I with the Introduction. 3 pts. Nagoya Studies in Indian Culture and Buddhism: Sambhasa 14, 16, 17. Nagoya: Department of Indian Philosophy, Nagoya University. [Ph.D. diss., Harvard Univ., 1960.]

_________1967. The Sphotanirnaya: Chapter XIV of the Vaiyakaranabhusanasdra of Kaunda Bhatta, Edited with Introduction, Translation, and Critical and Exegetical Notes. Publications of the Centre of Advanced Study in Sanskrit; class C, no. 2. Pune: Univ. of Poona.

_________2015. Kaunda Bhatta. Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies: The Philosophy of the Grammarians, ed. H. G. Coward and K. Kunjunni Raja. Pp. 255-308. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press; Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.

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