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The authorship of the Īśopaniṣad- and Kaṭhopaniṣad- Bhāṣya attributed to Śaṅkara

In this presentation, a statistical investigation of the authorship of the Īśopaniṣad- and Kaṭhopaniṣad- bhāṣya, which are traditionally ascribed to Śaṅkara, will be undertaken, together with Hacker’s method of terminology analysis. The Indian tradition and Hacker’s analysis of manuscript colophons considers Śaṅkara the author of both of these works. Nevertheless, Śaṅkara’s authorship of these and other works traditionally attributed to him is still contested, and other forms of authorship verification analysis should be undertaken. Recent authorship attribution and verification studies have shown remarkable results, and I intend to employ some of these methods on Sanskrit texts. A wide range of methods are employed in modern authorship attribution studies. In order to verify Śaṅkara’s authorship, the most frequent word (MFW) occurrence rate method has been chosen. Principal component analysis and cluster analysis have been chosen as the proper ways in which to visualize the results of MFW frequencies. The first part of the presentation will show that, according to the philological criterion proposed by Hacker, there is no reason to disprove the traditional attribution. The second part of the presentation will explain and validate the proposed statistical techniques. Text samples of works for which Śaṅkara’s authorship has been established (the Brahmasūtra-bhāṣya, Bṛhadāraṇyakopaniṣad- bhāṣya, and Upadeśasāhasrī) will be presented in order to see if these works show similarities to each other and if they display internal consistency. Then, they will be compared to works by other authors (Maṇḍana Miśra, Sureśvara, and Vācaspati Miśra) to verify if the proposed techniques are able to distinguish them from Śaṅkara. The commentaries on the Īśā- and Kaṭha-upaniṣad will then be compared to all of these texts to see if they bear similarities to texts that have been established as genuine works by Śaṅkara, and if they can be distinguished from works that were certainly not authored by Śaṅkara.

imposters method ; stylometry ; authorship verification ; advaita ; vedānta

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