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Abstract:

The article explores the origin, development, and function of commentary as a specific genre of the ancient Indian literary tradition. The author connects the appearance of commentary literature to the formation in the middle of the 1st millennium BC of the tradition of the sacred “recollection” (smṛti), which inherited the authority of the Vedic canon of divine revelation (śruti). It is argued in the paper that another important factor contributing to the formation of commentary literature consisted in public debates on religious and philosophical issues, in which traditional Brahmanic wisdom was compared for the (cт.32) first time to the unorthodox worldview of new religious movements (primarily, Buddhism and Jainism).

The main form of discourse in the tradition of smṛti became the aphoristic verbal formulas (sūtras). The collections compiled with the help of these verbal formulas functioned as basic (“root”) texts in various fields of knowledge, but the understanding of these concise manuals without commentaries was almost impossible. Commentaries, created to explain short aphorisms of various “root” texts, became a universal genre that ensured the continuity of the smṛti tradition and the progressive development of various fields of knowledge. The author differentiates two distinct approaches to commenting of the ancient Indian texts: “technical” commentary, connected to the practice of oral learning, and “analytical”, originated from the theoretical discourse and polemic style of oral debates. The paper, furthermore, provides a detailed description of various types of commentary (bhāṣya, vārttika, ṭīkā), appeared during the period of written fixation of “root” texts and reflective of a new paradigm of written literature. Keywords: commentary, Sanskrit, Indian literature, authorship, śruti, smṛti, sūtra, bhāṣya, śāstra, vārttika, ṭīkā.