The Authorship of the Anunyasa
By Kshitish Chandra Chatterjee
Summary
This article, written by Kshitis Chandra Chatterji, discusses the authorship of the Anunyāsa, a grammatical treatise sometimes conflated with the Tantrapradīpa of Maitreya Rakṣita. In the introduction to his edition of the Kāśikāvivaraṇapañcikā, Prof. Sriscandra Chakravarti observed that some scholars identify the Anunyāsa with the Tantra, but Chatterji argues that the two works are distinct. He cites quotations from Stradeva’s Paribhāṣāvṛtti (Benares edition) showing that the Anunyāsa is attributed to an author referred to as “Upa.” The passages discuss technical points of Pāṇinian grammar and indicate that “Upa” (possibly Upavarṣa) wrote a commentary distinct from the Tantrapradīpa. Chatterji points out that various authors refer to the Tantrapradīpa and Anunyāsa separately and that the linguistic evidence does not support merging them. He concludes that Upavarṣa is the probable author of the Anunyāsa and that conflating it with Maitreya Rakṣita’s work obscures the textual history of grammatical commentaries. The article emphasises the importance of careful source criticism in determining authorship and warns against accepting traditional attributions without examining textual evidence.
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Conclusion
Through analysis of quotations in medieval grammatical commentaries, the author argues that the Anunyāsa and the Tantrapradīpa are separate works. The Anunyāsa is attributed to “Upa,” likely Upavarṣa, while the Tantrapradīpa is by Maitreya Rakṣita. This clarification helps trace the lineage of grammatical scholarship and underscores the need to distinguish between similarly named texts when reconstructing intellectual history.