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________________ PRAKRIT VERSES IN SANSKRIT WORKS ON POETICS 1. The Need For A Critical Edition : When scholars of eminence and learned Pandits have edited the various texts on Sanskrit poetics, one should not have felt the need for bringing out a critical edition of "Prakrit Verses In Sanskrit Works On Poetics." With due deference to these learned scholars and Pandits, I cannot help making a remark that Prakrit verses have received far less attention than they deserve. At many places the text is corrupt, sometimes very corrupt. In some places the Sanskrit Chaya does not agree with the corresponding Prakrit passages, often partly and sometimes wholly. There is a large number of Prakrit verses drawn as illustrations from works which are lost and are yet to be discovered. In the footnotes to their texts the editors simply remark 'Durbodha or avisada or aspasta iyam gatha' and express their helplessness in rendering the Prakrit gatha intelligible. They only remain content by adding a questionmark when they are confronted with a corrupt reading. Owing to want of sufficient knowledge of Prakrit some perpetrate ludicrous blunders while translating Prakrit verses into English or modern Indian languages, and do injustice to Prakrit poets. It is the duty of modern research scholars to present the text of the Prakrit verses as correctly as possible by undertaking a comparative study. Vigorous efforts must be made to trace their primary sources and where that is not possible--on account of the irretrievable loss of Prakrit poetic works--to hunt secondary sources such as works on Prakrit Grammar, Prosody Prakrit Anthologies and other works on Poetics to find if any of the corrupt verses have been cited in any of these works. References to the primary or secondary sources often help a curious reader to refer to the context in which the verses occur and thus facilitate understanding. Many scholars believed that the number of these Prakrit verses could not be large since a good many of them are repeated from early standard works like Dhvanyaloka and Kavyaprakasa. When I first undertook the work of restoring the text of the illustrative Prakrit verses I was myself not Jain Education International www.jainelibrary.org For Private & Personal Use Only
| SR No. | 001868 |
| Book Title | Studies in Jain Literature |
| Original Sutra Author | N/A |
| Author | V M Kulkarni |
| Publisher | Shardaben Chimanbhai Educational Research Centre |
| Publication Year | 2001 |
| Total Pages | 114 |
| Language | English |
| Classification | Book_English, Literature, & Story |
| File Size | 14 MB |