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 29

8
EDITOR'S PREFACE
of slokas they believed to belong to Bhartṛhari. That the compiler borrowed stanzas from the Pañcatantra seems to me a fantastic conclusion; for that matter, Hertel's studies of the Pañcatantra itself have a much less secre foundation of MS study than would be neccessary for such a popular work. Finally, it is known that the Pañcatantra did not remain unchanged through the ages so that comparing it with a steadily growing Bhartṛhari text would need far more detailed chronological data than is available to-day to the most fortunate scholar.
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It is not claimed that the present edition overcomes all theso obstacles. Just as the older mathematics demanded as well as supplied an exact prediction. for any physical theory, older text-criticism under happier conditions could claim to have restored the original text. Problems like ours arise very rarely in Europe. If Homer is represented only by MSS centuries later than the time of composition, the number of codices and hence their variation is small, while we have careful notes by the Alexandrians. In the case of Virgil, we know that the author did not live to complete the work according to his own plan. There is ample historical and archaeological evidence to supplement the text of Tacitus's manuscript, so that the problem is one of minor emendation. The Latin Vulgate Bible does exist in a large number of medieval copies, but here the work is known to be a translation, with fairly accurate specimens of the original, and the sole difficulty might be in restoring usages of St. Jerome's day, for which there is a great deal of external evidence. With Dante, every detail of the author's life has been studied, and the stanzas themselves are not in doubt, the major problem being of contemporary Tuscan orthography for the volgare, which was in any case not crystallized and which can be studied from innumerable documents that still exist. Stripping off Berni's addtions from Boiardo's unfinished epic, or showing that Torquato Tasso's own improvements were on occasion rejected-quite properly-by public taste, or applying inner criticism to Shakespeare's plays are almost trivial when compared to the task of determining the text of a loosely strung collection of verses, with violently conflicting order as well as contents in different versions, and where nothing is reliably known of the author's life or date. Under these circumstances, the most I can claim is to have prepared the first critical edition. This is all that Sukthankar claimed for his own masterly edition of parts of the great epic, though the formidable bulk of the Mahabharata makes it doubtful that even the first critical edition thereof will be finished in a manner as satisfactory to scholars as to weight lifters; to expect with Sukthankar a succession of critical editions which would later be forthcoming appears today rather a poor sarcasm. With Bhartṛhari, a succession of critical editions can certainly be expected provided the editors realize, in the absence of the accidental discovery of some very ancient text of unquestionable authenticity, the parallel between this sort of an editorial method and modern physics or statistical theory which obtain quite reliable conclusions from strongly varying observations, though without the clockwork (and fictitious) certainty of