The Nighantu And The Nirukta Of Sri Yaskacarya Introduction Part 1 The Oldest Indian Treatise On Etymology Philology And Semantics

When I first came to Oxford in the autumn of 1916, I undertook, on the suggestion of Professor A.A. Macdonell, to collate the hitherto unutilized Nirukta Manuscripts, contained in the Max Muller Memorial and the Chandra Shum Shere Collections, and to see if some new light could be thrown on the text of the Nirukta. A careful examination of the materials at my disposal has led me to the conclusion that the text of the Nirukta has been gradually expanded by the addition of short passages, chiefly in the etymological explanations which easily lent themselves to such interpolations. At present the history of the gradual expansion can be traced only down to the thirteenth century A.D. There is a lack of reliable evidence going further. But I have reasons to suspect that even up to the thirteenth century, the text of the Nirukta has not been handed down with a uniform and unbroken tradition.