The commentary of the Puruṣasūkta ascribed to Śaunaka
(2023) 8th International Vedic Workshop — Location: Paris-Aubervilliers (18.September.2023)
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- Uv(v)aṭa (11th c.), commenting on the Puruṣasūkta as included in the Vājasaneyisaṃhitā (ch. 31), reproduces an earlier commentary upon the hymn which he ascribes to Śaunaka. By examining the data about this Vedic ācārya (whose portrait was already sketched by Patton 2011) as provided by the (12th c.? Kerala) commentator Ṣaḍguruśiṣya in the introduction of his Vedārthadīpikā, one can infer that Śaunaka was at first a Ṛgvedin scholar, alleged re-arranger of the ṚV 2nd maṇḍala, author of a Ṛk-prātiśākhya and several metrical Anukramaṇī (the devatā one, expanded later on, becoming the present Bṛhad-devatā; Tokunaga), ‘nearly’ founder of his own Ṛgvedic ritual school by composing a (too) long Sūtra (said to have been replaced with a better one by his disciple Āśvalāyana, except the fragmentarily preserved Gṛhya-; cf. the 5th book, = the 4th one in Ṣaḍguruśiṣya’s version, of the Aitareya-Āraṇyaka, in sūtra style, attributed either to Āśvalāyana, as by the latter, or to Śaunaka by Sāyaṇa; Khare), and showing ‘magical’ (pre-‘Tantric’; Bhat) interests with the authorship of the Ṛgvidhāna (see also the edited metrical Śaunakīya, similarly concerned with the ritual efficiency of ṚV recitations). This last work could be the link with the (second, viz. another, different, or the same ‘transformed’?) Atharvavedin Śaunaka, arranger of an Atharva recension bearing his name, author of the Atharva-prātiśākhya entitled Śaunakīyā caturādhyāyikā, and to whom are also attributed the Caraṇa-vyūha (AV-Pariśiṣṭa no. 49, for which a Paippalāda distinct recension exists) and various teachings in the AV-Pariśiṣṭas (no. 19b, 25, 30, 52, 58b, 62, 68 etc.). Śaunaka’s Puruṣasūkta-bhāṣya as transmitted by Uvaṭa could constitute the earliest preserved traditional commentary of a whole sūkta, after Yāska’s bhāṣya on individual mantras in the Nirukta. We will here assess the possibility of a tentative dating around the 4th-3th c. BC, corresponding to the relative dating suggested for (the ‘historical’) Śaunaka by Macdonell and Keith, that is between Yāska and Kātyāyana. Two problems remain: the source of this Puruṣasūkta-bhāṣya (is it an autonomous work, such as are commonly found in manuscripts for this most popular sūkta, or was it part of a larger VS commentary), and the fact that the version of the hymn commented upon is specific to the VS (with six additional verses and a few textual variants), whereas one would have expected Śaunaka to use the ṚV, if not the even more different AV, version of the hymn. Finally, as for its contents, Śaunaka’s commentary testifies to an early form of Vedāntic ascetism, stressing the inner form of the sacrifice, the ātma-yajña, proper to the yogin and leading to mokṣa.
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Vielle, C. (2023). The commentary of the Puruṣasūkta ascribed to Śaunaka. 8th International Vedic Workshop, Paris-Aubervilliers. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/23802