Sanatana Dharma - Aka Hinduism (1st Bin)

[Bodhi]

Writing from kAshmIra in the same century, grammarian kaiyaTa upAdhyAya holds a similar view, and expresses it with a beautiful opening verse of his bhAShya-pradIpa, a commentary on the MB:



yogena chittasya padena vAchAM malaM sharIrasya cha vaidyakena

yo.pAkarottaM pravaraM munInAM pata~njaliM prA~njalirAnatosmi (bhAshya-pradIpa, opening)



[The impurities of chitta by yoga, of speech by the (MB’s) pada-s, and those of the body by the treatise on medicine; That First of all the muni-s, sage pata~njali, who has removed all these impurities, to Him I bow with joined palms]



We find the same view continuing down to the later centuries among the grammarians. nAgojIbhaTTa writing in the late 16th century speaks thus in his vaiyAkaraNa-siddhAnta-ma~njUShA: Apto nAma anubhavena vastutattvasya kArtsyena nishchayavAn / rAgAdivishAdapi nAnyathAvAdI yaH sa iti charake pata~njaliH. The same scholar says in his paspaSha adhikaraNa of MB, “yoga-sUtre-pata~njalokte” as well as elsewhere “taduktaM charake pata~njalinA sendriyaM dravyaM nirindriyamachetanam”, implying throughout, that the three works, YS, MB, and CS were authored by the same pata~njali.



In the 18th century, rAmabhadra dIkShita dedicated a whole work in compiling a biographical sketch of pata~njali, entitled pata~njalicharitam, where he holds the author of all these works to have been one single pata~njali, and remarks:



sUtrANi yogashAstre vaidyakashAstre cha vArttikAni tataH / kR^itvA pata~njalamuniH prachArayAmAsa jagadidaM trAtuM



[yoga-sUtra-s, followed by the treatise on medicine, and then the grammatical rules, Sage pata~njali created and propagated all these three in the world]



So we can easily see that for a long time, starting at the least with bhartR^ihari in the sixth century, all the way down to rAmabhadra dIkShita in the Eighteenth, pata~njali was considered to have been a single author of all the diverse books, and this has remained a firm tradition and a widely held view among the Hindus for over a millennia. It is not until the 19th century that we come across such views being inserted in the saMskR^ita dictionaries like vAchaspatyam and Shabda-kalpa-druma that the two pata~njali’s are different:



vAchaspatyam: “ayaM cha yogashAstrakArAt bhinna iti saralAyAmasmAbhissamarthitam| anayorabheda iti pAshchAtya vaiyAkaraNAH ” [And this pata~njali is different from the author of the yogashAstra, this is the simple view we hold. Conversely that they are the same was a view held the later grammarians.]



And also, shabda-kalpa-druma: “keShAnchinmate yogasUtrakAra pata~njalerbhAShyakR^it pata~njalirbhinna eva| anayorabhedatAm tu nirdishanti pAshchAtyAH” [Some consider the yoga-sUtra author pata~njali to have been different from the mahAbhAShya author pata~njali. That they are the same is a view developed by the later people.]



It seem strange that these colonial-period dictionaries should say that the "later people" considered the one-pata~njali theory, whereas indeed it seems that it is the still “later people” who thought otherwise.



But let us then see by other means, directly from the texts of the four works, whether they COULD have come from the same author, and also review the arguments of those opposed to the traditional view.



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