ABSTRACT
Mahabh~ya from the southern regions, and revived it again. Bharq-hari's commentary on the Mahabh~ya is the oldest commentary to have survived for us. He refers to a great many alternative interpretations, but always without naming the persons who held those views. That makes it very difficult to reconstruct an accurate history of interpretation of the Mahabh~ya before'the time of Bhartrhari. However, Bharq-hari's own works gained high prestige, both within the tradition of the P-aQinian commentators, as well as among the philosophical traditions in general. Bhartrhari's influence on later commentators was so persuasive that the great commentator Kaiyata (eleventh century AD) says in the beginning of his commentary that he has been able to cross the ocean of the Mahabh~ya by means of the bridge built by Bhartrhari. Not only Bhartrhari's commentary on the Mahabh~ya, but his VakyapadIya also has had a similar deep influence. While we must join Kaiyata in being grateful to Bharq-hari for all the assistance he has offered in interpreting the Mahabh~ya, we must at the same time recognize that the traditional interpretation of the Mahabh~ya has been so densely overlaid with Bhartrhari's theories that one rarely gets a discussion in Kaiyata or Nagesa where a careful distinction is drawn between the ideas of Katyayana and Pataiijali on the one hand and Bhartrhari's ideas on the other. This makes it all the more difficult, though necessary, to draw careful distinctions between Bhartrhari and his great distant predecessors.
