Shataka Trayadi Subhashit Sangraha

SR No.: 002915
Original Sutra Author: Bhartuhari
Author: Dharmanand Kosambi
Publisher: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan
Publication Year: 1948
Total Pages: 346
Language: Hindi, English
Classification: Book_Devnagari & Literature
File Size: 22 MB

Page 26

EDITOR'S PREFACE
this, from the translation made by Abraham Roger at Palghat with the help of a Brahmin Padmanābha, and published about forty years later in a French translation by Thomas de la Grue under the title La porte ouverte pour parvenir á la connaissance du paganisme caché [ Amsterdam, 1670). Though Carey's College still functions at Chandernagore, not a single copy of his edition seems to be available in any known Indian collection. One possible reason for this may be the fact that the press was struck by lightning in 1812, hoing destroyed with its store of books. I had to read this work from a microfilm of the IO copy, which shows the N to be Northern, while the Ś and V are from W codices, the latter being supplemented to make an approximate hundred. The prefaco shows that the edition was prepared from three different MSS, and that it was meant quito frankly to be a school text for the college at Fort William.
The next, decidedly more pretentious, edition was by P. von Bohlen, "Bhartriharis Sententiae/et/ Carmen quod Chauri nomine circumfertur eroticum/ad codicem MSTT fidem edidit Laline vertit et commentario instruxit Petrus À Bohlen" (Berlin, Ferdinand Duemmler, 1833). Bohlen follows Carey for the śrngāra (missing in the Amsterdam translation of 1670) and takes Roger as a guide in constituting the Niti, probably because of the similar paddhati division. His work could have passed without much notice but for the large stonos he cast at Indian pandits who, in Carey's edition, “...metra protentosis lectionibus violarunt; glossemata in textum, genuina lectione noglecta, receperunt; versuum ordinem turbarunt; scholia in librum Vairagyam vitiis plena inprimenda curarunt textum denique typis expressum a sphalmatis typographicis non ubique purgarunt."
This deserves some comment, if only because of the long tradition set up by i certain type of European scholar who generously gave the credit for his mistakes to the Indian pandits who had done the actual work. Let it be adınitted at the start that, even today, the best of presses in India leave a good deal to be desired, while the worst are probably the worst in the world. Still, if Bohlen imagined that his own edition was free from these defects, it could only be because of an unparallelled smugness and complacency. The Indian pandit would have, at the very least, known that there were difficulties of syntax in such readings as hotāramapi juhvantam (P. 44, N 47°], -gunāḥ samsargato jayate (p 46, N51]; and that kodravūnām (p. 52-3, N 98°) or tyäktva [p. 54 V 4] leave something to be desired on the part of the editor. What puzzles me is the splendid phrase "genuina lectione neglecta" and "versuum ordinein turbarunt". How did Bohlen know the true reading or the correct order from Carey's edition, a couple of scrappy W MSS, and our fi supplemented by conceited ignorance of Sanskrit (for which criticism sits ill upon mel), when I find the text in some doubt and the order quite uncertain after consulting several hundred codices? That the W commentary differs systematically from the W text did not strike him at all, so that the pandits he belaboured were in reality more faithful to the manuscripts than Bohlen himself. Finally, his procedure would have led to a very crude approximation to the S prototype for the N and V, had he been able to identify some of Roger's originals; for example, kim kūrmasya is confused with gātah kurmaḥ. His synoptic chart is