Form, function and interpretation: a case study in the textual criticism of Pāṇini’s Aṣṭādhyāyī

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, the tools of textual criticism as they will be applied to the analysis of Pāṇini’s Aṣṭādhyāyī are discussed, and in the process some unproven assumptions, widespread in this field, concerning the alleged perfect textual transmission of the Aṣṭādhyāyī are critically reviewed. Next, some formal criteria are suggested, in addition to those already devised by other scholars, for identification of textual interpolations in the text of the Aṣṭādhyāyī. It will be argued that, with no critical edition of the received text at our disposal, a theory based on investigation of the possible interpolations must be accepted as a prima facie approach to the philology of Pāṇini’s grammar. The second part of the paper represents the application of the suggested method to the syntactical sections of the Aṣṭādhyāyī (covering the kāraka/vibhakti device). The theoretical and formal heterogeneity of the sūtras of this section, and their incompatibility with other sections of the grammar, are used as a criterion for postulating interpolations in the received text of the Aṣṭādhyāyī.