Abstract

This new edition is a carefully elaborated critical and annotated reading of the purvapaksah of Vidhivivekah and Nyayakanika, together with supercommentaries previously available only in manuscript. An introduction discusses the need for and achievements of the present edition, and the significance of the works and their authors; provides an account of the purvapaksah of Vidhivivekah; describes the manuscript sources for the edition; and presents and discusses stemmata codicum for the manuscripts of Vidhivivekah and Nyayakanika. A series of appendices give the verses for the entire text of Vidhivivekah; an index of verse quarters; indices of quotations of other works in the purvapaksah of Vidhivivekah, Nyayakanika, and Jusadhvankarani, and in Svaditankarani/; indices of quotations of Vidhivivekah and Nyayakanika in other works; indices of authors, works and their portions, doctrines and their upholders, and schools and their adherents, mentioned in the purvapaksah of Vidhivivekah, Nyayakanika, and Jusadhvankarani/, and in Svaditankarani/; cross references to the uttarapaksah; and several additional notes to the texts. A large number of sources, paraphrases, parallel passages and comparable arguments found in the primary literature are identified and quoted in the notes. In addition, quotations internal to the text, commentary and supercommentaries are identified and recorded in the notes. ;Vidhivivekah is the treatise in the mimamsa philosophical school composed by Mandanamisrah which examines the meaning of vidhih, 'injunction'. The commentary, Nyayakanika, by Vacaspatimisrah, another well known philosophical writer , is his earliest work and the only known running commentary on Vidhivivekah. It provides a clear and authoritative interpretation of the text, and includes short treatise length elaborations of selected portions. The two supercommentaries by Paramesvarah, Jusadhvankarani/ and Svaditankarani/, which are published here for the first time, are not only lucid and insightful aids for readers of Vidhivivekah and Nyayakanika, but also give testimony to readings of good text and commentary manuscripts available in the fourteenth century CE, but sometimes not preserved in currently available text and commentary manuscripts. Their clear statements of arguments obscured in the muddled readings of text and commentary manuscripts often facilitated the editorial work. ;Publication elsewhere of an edition of the complete text and commentary, together with the supercommentaries may be expected within five years