Problems of Critically Editing a Codex Unicus: The Mahābhāṣyadīpikā of Bhartṛhari

Chaired by Madhav Deshpande, Professor Emeritus, Sanskrit and Linguistics, University of Michigan.

Bhartṛhari's Mahābhāṣyadīpikā is the oldest surviving commentary on Patañjali's Vyākaraṇamahābhāṣya, and a key source on systems of thought such as Sāṁkhya and Mīmāṁsā — but only a fragment survives, in a single multi-scribe manuscript with gaps where copyists couldn't read the original. This talk compares the three existing critical editions of the text and how each has handled the problem of editing from a single, incomplete witness.

About the speaker: Saroja Bhate headed the Department of Sanskrit and Prakrit Languages at the University of Pune for fifteen years and served twice as Honorary Secretary of BORI. An authority on Sanskrit grammar, she has published fifteen books and around sixty research articles and has held visiting professorships across Europe, the UK, Japan, and China.