A South Indian Digest of Commentaries on the Nyayasutra

The Nyayasutravivarana provides the most accessible introduction to the core teachings of early Nyaya. It is a commentary on the traditions fundamental text, the Nyayasutra, in the form of a digest. It was composed by Gambhiravamshaja/Sripravaduka in the first centuries of the second millennium CE in Pundarikapura, most likely present-day Pandharpur, a popular pilgrimage site in southwestern India. Skillfully excerpting and summarizing key passages from the two earliest and most important works of the Nyaya tradition, the Nyayabhashya and the Nyayavarttika, the author created a comprehensive yet concise commentarya simplified commentary on a not-so-simple text. The present study examines and documents all known textual witnessessix in total, all from South Indiaand their contents. The three-color critical edition of the first chapter of the Nyayasutravivarana contains all relevant variant readings and a comprehensive study of the parallel passages. The colors indicate the source of the information. This study, however, goes far beyond a standard documentation of textual witnesses and a typical critical edition. In fact, it offersto the curious readerthe complete documentation of the text- critical raw data that served as the basis for the genealogical analysis and the critical edition. The detailed documentation of all procedural steps, from the acquisition of copies of the textual witnesses, to the collation and processing of text-critical data, to the creation of the critical edition, makes it possible to trace all genealogical and editorial decisions. In addition, this allows the procedure used herein to be evaluated and adopted in whole or in part as a guide for future studies. Among the topics discussed are what information and types of variant readings are best suited for genealogical analysis, what needs to be considered when collating so that text-critical data can be evaluated digitally and meaningful analyses generated, and the benefits of evaluating text-critical data using multidimensional scaling. Finally, this study includes an examination of three South Indian writing systems: the Grantha Tamil script, the Telugu script, and the Kannada scriptall documentations unique in their presentation and comprehensiveness.