वैयाकरणसिद्धान्तभूषणम्- The Vaiyakaranasiddhantabhusana of Kaundabhatta- Also Known As Vaiyakaranabhusana and Brhadbhusana, With The Niranjani Commentary by Ramyatna Shukla and Prakasa Explanatory Notes by K.V. Ramakrishnamacharyulu (Part IV)

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The Vaiyakaranasiddhantabhusana, also known as the Vaiyakaranabhusana, is a commentary on the great 17th-century grammarian Bhattoji Diksita’s Vaiyakaranamatonmajjana, written by Bhattoji’s nephew Kaundabhatta. It is one of the most important texts of the late Paninian grammatical tradition on questions of semantics. The main intention of Kaundabhatta’s commentary is to refute objections raised by proponents of the two rival systems of Logic (Nyaya) and Exegesis (Mimamsa) on various aspects of semantics, and to establish the Grammarians’ views on these subjects. The Vaiyakaranasiddhantabhusanasara, an abridged version of the Vaiyakaranabhusana by the same author, is a popular work that was commented upon more than ten times. On the other hand, nobody so far has attempted to write a commentary on the Vaiyakaranabhusana itself. The present work contains the Vaiyakaranabhusana along with a commentary called Niranjani by Pandit Ramyatna Shukla and explanatory notes (Prakasa) by the editor. This fourth and last part of the work discusses specific issues of semantics: the expressive power (sakti) of words, the meaning of negation, particles, abstract suffixes, etc. It also contains an extensive discussion of the philosophical concept of sphota, one of the most fundamental notions introduced by the Paninian tradition to account for the understanding of expressive units as undivided wholes. About the Author: About the Author After retiring from his position as the Head of the Department of Vyakarana in the Sampurnanand Sanskrit University in Varanasi, Prof. Ramyatna Shukla served as a Visiting Professor at the Lal Bahadur Sanskrit Vidyapeetha and was a Shastra Chudamani Scholar at the Rashtriya Sanskrit Sansthan. He was also associated with the French Institute of Pondicherry as an Honorary Professor. He is the recipient of many awards, including the Certificate of Honour for Proficiency in Sanskrit conferred by the President of India and the Vachaspati Puraskar Award of the K.K. Birla Foundation for a work entitled Vyakaranadarsane Srstiprakriyavimarsah (2005) and most recently the Padma Shree, India's fourth highest civilian award. He holds titles such as Mahamahopadhyaya, Abhinava Panini, and Sarasvatiputra.

Prof. K. V. Ramakrishnamacharyulu is the former Vice-Chancellor of the Jagadguru Ramanandacharya Rajasthan Sanskrit University, Jaipur and a retired Professor in Vyakaraṇa at the Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidyapeetha in Tirupati. He has studied in depth the Vaiyakaranabhusanasara and all its commentaries, and is now engaged in writing a comprehensive commentary on this text. He has been honoured with titles such as Mahamahopadhyaya (honoris causa), Sastravidvanmani, Vyakarana Sastra Visarada, and with various awards, including the Certificate of Honour for Proficiency in Sanskrit for the year 2017, conferred by the President of India, and the Ramakrishna Award from the Sarasvati Vikas, Canada. He is currently associated with the French Institute of Pondicherry as an Honorary Professor.

Konda Bhatta, who authored the Vaiyakaranasiddhantabhusana (hereafter Bhusana), belongs to an age of erudition in sastras and vibrant debates of Vaiyakaranas with Naiyayikas and Mimamsakas. The usage was that a patron gifted learned panditas with the endowment of an agrahara, comprised of residence and income from a land, then invited them to conduct their sastric debates in his assembly hall (asthana). Asthanapandita was an honorific title and rewards were given to the victor in a debate. It is no wonder that in circles constituted in this way the knowledge and art of discussion reached a high degree of refinement.

The works of Konda Bhatta reflect this perfectly. They suggest the image of a circle of panditas, equally well-versed in the three arch sastras, vyakarana, nyaya, mimamsa (purva and uttara), so erudite and familiar with the intricacies of their disciplines that they can debate between themselves and expound the most abstract thoughts with great facility. Sri K. V. Ramakrsnamacarya has presented the circle and the territory of knowledge implicated in the Vaiyakaranasiddhantabhusana He has found a family story of achievements in intellectual activities. He has traced the ancestry of Konda Bhatta on the basis of information given in works produced in the family, starting from the Sadbhasacandrika of Laksmidhara. It was a family of Carukuri brahmins, of Kasyapagotra, living on the banks of the Krsna river in Andhra, doing the adhyayana of the Rgveda, with Laksmi-Venkatesa as their domestic deity. Laksmidhara was a younger brother of a first Konda Bhatta. Konda is a Telugu name not rare in Andhra. Laksmidhara, a prolific author, fathered Bhattoji Diksita and Rangoji Bhatta, who was the father of a second Konda (var. Kaunda) Bhatta. In genealogies the same name occurs frequently in every second generation.

Several members of the family received the patronage of great sovereigns. Laksmidhara is said to have been asthanapandita of King Tirumalaraya of the Aravidu dynasty, reigning in Penugonda. That was a time when nayakas of diverse provinces of the Karnataka-samrajya began to claim an independent power. Bhattoji Diksita and Rangoji Bhatta, then Konda Bhatta have been asthanapanditas of Nayakas of Ikkeri, namely Venkatappa Nayaka (1586-1629) and Virabhadra Nayaka (1629-1645). In their darbar hall at Ikkeri, in 1629 Rangoji Bhatta defended advaitavada against the dvaitavada supported by the Madhva ascetic Vidyadhisa Vaderu. He defeated his opponent and was rewarded by the king with a palanquin.

**Contents and Sample Pages**