Sanskrit Manuscripts : Ratnamatipaddhati

Ratnamati, Ānandadatta

Sanskrit Manuscripts

An almost complete copy of the Ratnamatipaddhati of Ānandadatta, a sub-commentary on the Cāndravyākaraṇapañjikā of Ratnamati (see Dimitrov 2010a, 2014), in its turn a commentary on the Cāndravyākaraṇa of Candragomin with the Vṛtti attributed to Dharmadāsa. The manuscript contains the beginning and the end of the section covering chapter (adhyāya) 2, quarter (pāda) 1, of Candragomin's grammar. The title and the name of the author are given in the colophon of another fragmentary manuscript kept in the University Library, <a target='_blank' class='externalLink' href='http://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-ADD-01657-00002/1'>Add.1657.2</a>, containing the same section of the work. They also appear in the final rubric of another manuscript, <a target='_blank' class='externalLink' href='http://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-ADD-01691-00006/1'>Add.1691.6</a>, containing the portion of the Ratnamatipaddhati covering Cāndravyākaraṇa 1.3. The Ratnamatipaddhati is unpublished and nothing is known with certainty about its author. According to Dimitrov (2014), he may have been affiliated with one of the large Buddhist universities in eastern India, such as Vikramaśīla, Nālandā, or Vajrāsana. If the Pañjikā was composed in the first half of the 10th c. CE, as argued by Dimitrov (2014), Ānandadatta would have flourished some time between the second half of the 10th c. and 1199 CE, which is the date recorded in the colophon of <a target='_blank' class='externalLink' href='http://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-ADD-01657-00002/1'>Add.1657.2</a>. In the present manuscript, the text stops abruptly after a sentence at the beginning of the commentary on the last sūtra of the pāda, 2.1.98, āśiṣyā āyuṣyabhadrārthakuśalārthaiś ca, recalled in abbreviated form with the initial word āśiṣyā on the last line of f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(65);return false;'>36r</a>, after which the scribe has left the lower portion of the folio blank.