IV · The Text

The fourth episode takes up the Text itself. To draw meaning or application from a text, we must rely on its interpretation, whether in its original language or, far worse, in translation. But what determines an interpretation, and what makes it legitimate? Is authorial intention even relevant? More specifically, are Patañjali’s (पतञ्जलि) intentions in composing the Yoga Sutra relevant? To guide the interpretation of a text, the lineages that carry it employ commentary, which keeps the text answerable to the historical, social, and political circumstances of each age. Commentary is a different thing from the literary criticism of the modern academy: criticism stands outside a text and judges it, while commentary stands within the tradition and keeps it dynamic. So when the Western academy privileges the printed and published text, it obscures the tradition’s living commentary. Peter puts it in terms of music: you may copy a raga from a record, but that is a long way from being taught it by a master, and he has followed one family of musicians holding the same thing across five generations, each expressing it anew. Pāṇini’s (पाणिनि) Aṣṭādhyāyī (अष्टाध्यायी), which Leonard Bloomfield called one of the greatest monuments of human intelligence (1933), had by the end of the sixteenth century become so obtuse to new students that Bhaṭṭoji Dīkṣita reordered its four thousand sutras and added his own commentary to maintain its tradition and keep it dynamic in the face of different historical circumstances. From the inside.