Vādagrantha as Genre: The Systematisation of a Commentarial Tradition

In scholarly treatments of Sanskrit textual traditions, the genre of commentary (bhāṣya) has generally overshadowed a closely adjacent genre known as vādagrantha, no doubt a result of its capacious and elusive nature. This paper focuses on the Svāminārāyaṇa-Siddhānta-Sudhā, a 21st-century vādagrantha text of the theistic Vedānta school Akṣara-Puruṣottama Darśana. It first engages with definitional questions concerning the nature and purpose of this genre—which appears prominently across the Vedānta, Nyāya, Mīmāṃsā, and Buddhist traditions—and locates its conceptual origin in the eponymous Nyāya notion of vāda. The paper demonstrates the significance of this genre in two respects: 1) its concern first and foremost with ideas, as opposed to the shastric texts alone, and in turn 2) its crucial relevance in systematising the beliefs of a religious tradition in a Sanskrit philosophical register, in view of a particular socio-historical context.