SARVANANDA AND VALLABHADEVA

By S. K. DE
TN his very interesting article in BSOS., vol. v, pt. i, pp. 27 f. on
-*- my suggested date of the Subhdsitdvali of Vallabhadeva (JRAS.,
1927, pp. 471 f.), Professor Keith tries his best to minimize
the importance of the passage in Sarvananda's commentary, which
not only makes a reference to the Kasmlraka Vallabhadeva but actually
cites verse No. 726 from his Subhdsitdrali. Professor Keith expresses
his belief that the citation is " merely an interpolation " ; but as this
statement probably appeared too sweeping, he hastens to add that it is
rather " an intelligent addition of some scribe ". This may, indeed,
be a facetious way of solving the problem ; but the problem does not
appear to be so easy, and the question of interpolation is one on which
it does not help to be dogmatic in the absence of definite and fairly
conclusive evidence.
Professor Keith's arguments on this question are far from con-
vincing. I cannot agree with his view that the passage x in question
is precisely of the kind that can be interpolated with ease, for it is
neither irrelevant nor haphazard. On this point no precise argument
is possible except the impression one derives from the context in
which the particular passage occurs, as well as from general
commentatorial practice, which does not preclude citation of an illustra-
tion to explain a somewhat unusual usage. Reading the text in
question again without any decided bias in any direction, I cannot
find anything in it which would justify me in holding that it is an
interpolation ; and the onus of proving that it is such lies on those
who allege it. Professor Keith speaks of " the curious mode of
citation " ; but there is nothing extraordinary in the citation of the
name of the author along with the name of the work from which the
quotation is made. Nor is it a fact that no parallel can be found to
this procedure in the rest of the TiJca-sarvasva, as Professor Keith
alleges. It is true that Sarvananda's general procedure is to cite
briefly either the name of the author or that of the work, most often
in a contracted form ; but such citations are also to be found :
Pt. ii, p. 21 : taihd hi sdhitya-kalpatarund sri-pavyokena vdsand-
manjarydm bhanitam—sa jayati, etc.
1
Kamalingamisasana of Amara with the Tlka-sarrasra of Sarvananda, ed.
Trivandrum, pt. ii, p. 130.
500 S. K. DE—

Pt. ii, p. 32 : tathd ca samhitdydm varahah.

Or, in another form :
Pt. i, p. 34 : iti dhdtu-pdrdyane purnacandrah.
Professor Keith also finds it extraordinary that not merely the name
but also the description Kasmlraka should be employed in the citation ;
but I fail to see anything unusual in distinguishing an author by
locality, especially when such a differentiation is useful in marking
the Vallabhadeva of the Subhdsitdvali from the scholiast Vallabhadeva,
whom also Sarvananda quotes twice simply as Vallabha with a pointed
reference to his commentaries on &isupala° (pt. ii, p. 23) and Kumdra°
(pt. ii, p. 350). It does not help critical scholarship to suspect inter-
polation at every step, simply because the particular passage may
happen to be at variance with accepted opinion with regard to the
date of the somewhat dubious text of an anthology. He must have
indeed been a very " intelligent " scribe who could not only find
an apt illustration from an anthology but also give the name and
precise description of its compiler.
Professor Keith's next argument that Sarvananda's text in general
is suspiciously corrupt does not appear to possess much weight. At
least, the authenticity of the passage in question receives support
from the fact that the reference also occurs independently in the
manuscript noticed by Sesagiri S~astri in his Report (No. 2, p. 26).
Professor Keith, however, attempts to support his general argument
of a faulty text by referring to a passage which Sarvananda purports
to quote from Durghata but which is given entirely differently in the
Durghata-vrtti of Saranadeva, which Professor Keith takes to be the
work cited by Sarvananda. It is, however, not clear at all that the
Durghata-vrtti of Saranadeva was actually meant by Sarvananda,
for neither the full title nor the author's name appears. It would
seem, on the other hand, that it is not a case of confusion or faulty
text-tradition, but of a reference probably to another unknown or
lost work, which dealt with durghata usages in the same way as
Saranadeva's work does. Aufrecht notes a Durghata by Eaksita,
presumably Maitreya Raksita, which is quoted by Ujjvaladatta
in his commentary on the Vnddi-sutras (ed. Aufrecht, ii, 57 ; iii, 160 ;
iv, 1). This supposition that Sarvananda refers to a work other than
that of Saranadeva gains further support from the fact that while
Saranadeva's work, as known from its second verse, was not composed
till A.D. 1172, Sarvananda himself gives the date of composition
of his own work as A.D. 1160. It is not maintained that Sarvananda's
 OVL
SARVANANDA AND VALLABHADEVA

text, as it stands, is faultless. We must make allowance for mis-

quotations, often made from memory, usual in commentaries, for even
a careful writer like Mammata sometimes misquotes ; but it cannot be
said, in the absence of definite evidence, that Sarvananda's work errs
very much in this direction. Nor can we deduce from such mis-
quotations, even if they occur, that the text-tradition is faulty. At
any rate, it has not been proved yet that such liberty has been taken
in the text of Sarvananda as would admit the possibility of regarding
the passage in question as an interpolation.
The problem, therefore, is certainly not as simple as Professor
Keith would like us to think, and Sarvananda's citation of
Vallabhadeva cannot be so complacently dismissed. Professor Keith's
contention really narrows down the question to two main issues
which are in the nature of alternatives, viz. (i) whether we should
regard, as Professor Keith maintains, that the passage in Sarvananda,
which refers to and quotes from Kasmiraka Vallabhadeva's Su-
bhasitdvali is " an intelligent addition of some scribe ", or (ii) whether
the poetical quotations in the Subhdsitdrali, which conflict with the
date of Vallabhadeva thus indicated by Sarvananda's reference and
quotation (assuming the passage to be genuine), are to be regarded,
as I suggested, as later interpolations in a work which is admittedly
a compilation or an anthology. It is difficult indeed to balance the
probabilities, and I fully admitted the difficulty in my previous article ;
but it is clear that no substantial reason has yet been urged for
regarding Sarvananda's passage as an interpolation in the text,
and that therefore there is no other alternative than take the
Subhdsitdtali as prior in date to Sarvananda's commentary in
which this passage occurs. Professor Keith imagines that his views
have been shared by other scholars, but so far as I know, attention has
never been drawn to the passage in question, nor have the difficulties
which this passage has raised ever been discussed. It is true that the
acceptance of my suggestion would involve the assumption of
a large number of interpolations of verses of presumably later poets
into the present text of the Subhasitdvali ; but the SubMsitdvali, as
I have already shown, was an anthology in current use (as opposed
to the Tika-sarvasva, whose manuscripts even have become rare),
whose text cannot be and has not been regarded as possessing an
inviolable sanctity, and in which it would have been easy to interpolate
at later times verses of reputed, especially Kashmirian, authors.
As I have discussed this aspect of the question at some length in my
502 S. K. DE—

previous article on the subject, and as Professor Keith's criticism

does not make any fresh suggestion on this point, I refrain from
recapitulating my arguments here. It is somewhat surprising,
however, to find Professor Keith asserting that " reason suggests
that it is more logical to suppose one interpolation in the Tikd-sarvasva
than many in the Subhdsitdvali ". It is certainly a more simple
procedure, but I cannot see how it is more logical; for it is not good
logic to measure the balance of probability, always and especially
in this particular case, by the mere quantity of interpolations in the
respective texts. To a critical inquiry it is immaterial whether the
number of interpolations in the one text or the other is one or many,
so long as other facts may be adduced to point to the reasonable
probability of regarding a passage or passages as genuine or inter-
polated. In spite of Professor Keith's very able, if somewhat
unwarranted, arguments, nothing definite has yet been urged to prove
that Sarvananda's passage is in reality an interpolation into his text;
would it not be more logical to suppose that the passages in the
Subhdsitdvali, which really conflict with the date suggested by Sarva-
nanda's reference, are later interpolations in a work which was in the
nature of a current anthological compilation 1
Professor Keith very pertinently refers to the negative value of
my suggestion ; for the date achieved would hardly be of any practical
use when the suspicion of interpolation is inseparable from the text
for which the new date is obtained. I must admit that the result
obtained by me has not been very encouraging from the practical
point of view ; but at the same time it makes clear the necessity
of re-editing critically the text of the Subhdsitdvali from ampler and
better manuscript-material, for it must be admitted that Peterson's
materials were not of such a nature as to make his edition the final
one, more especially when one considers it in the light of the present
inquiry.
A few more words on one or two points raised incidentally in
Professor Keith's article. I am obliged to him for his reference to
my forthcoming edition of Nltivarman's Kicaka-vadha, which is already
in print and will be published very shortly1. The work is certainly
much older than the citations of Sarvananda or Purusottamadeva
would indicate. So far as I have been able to trace, the earliest
1
Since writing the above article my edition of Kicaka-vadha has been published
by the University of Dacca. The question raised here has been fully discussed in
my Introduction to the text.
 SARVANANDA AND VALLABHADKVA 503

writers to quote from this poem are Bhoja (both in his Sarasvati-
kanthdbharana and in his Sriigdra-prakasa) and Namisadhu. This
would furnish the lower limit of the date of the poem as the second
or third quarter of the eleventh century A.D.
I find myself unable to agree with Professor Keith's views (p. 31)
regarding the date of the scholiast Vallabhadeva, and am inclined to
think that Pathak's rather ingenious arguments have not been effective
enough to set aside Hultzsch's dating. The evidence cited by Pathak
from Ksirasvamin and Hemacandra does not appear to be conclusive,
as there is nothing to show that these are cases of real reference or
borrowing, or that these later writers did not themselves borrow the
passages in question from Vallabhadeva himself.