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Critical Account of Manuscripts
The present edition of the Kāvyānusāsana comprises the Sūtras numbering 208, the Alamkārachūņā maņi and the Viveka. It also includes a Saņskyta Tippaņa gathered from the margins of the palm-leaf manuscript printed in the form of an appendix to the main text. The Sūtras and the Alamkārachūdāmaņi form one work and are together referred to as Kāvyānuşāsana, though strictly speaking, according to the colophons at the end of the manuscripts of the work, the Alamkārachūņāmaņi is a commentary on the Kāvyānusāsana and therefore the title Kāvyānusāsana should be taken to denote the Sūtras only. Viveka is a seperate work, though the name Kāvyānuşāsana is sometimes loosely applied to it also. Hemachandra is the author of the Sūtras, the Alamkārachūdamaņi--the explanatory commentary on them, and the Viveka-the exhaustive commentary on the Alamkārachūdamaņi. The authorship of the Tippaña is unknown. Its contents are, probably, the notes of a student who took them down while studying the Kāvyānusāsana from some teacher of Poetics.
The text of the Kāvyānusāsana, that is, the Sūtras and the Alamkārachūdāmaņi is based upon three manu. scripts-one on palm-leaf and the other two on paper. They are described below.
1. P. The palm-leaf manuscript which is referred to in the text by the letter P is a manuscript from a Jaina manuscript library of Patan known as Tapāgaccha Bhandāra. It is six hundred years old, having
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