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________________ FOREWORD Even while the Critical Edition of the Mahabharu was being published, it was being repeatedly urged upon the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute that it should make available to the general public only the text of the Great Epic as constituted in its the Critical Edition. It was argued, and perhaps rightly-that, while the prolegomena, introductions, critical apparatus, text-critical notes, etc., which were included in the Critical Edition, were primarily intended for the few specialist-students of the Mahabharatu, the critically edited text would have a far wider appeal. The authorities of the Institute, too, had tentatively planned to bring out such volumes of only the constituted text of the Epic, but, naturally enough, they could not afford their attention being diverted from the main task of the Critical Edition itself. After the Critical Edition of the Mahabharata had been completed in September 1966, the Mahabharata Department of the Institute fully engaged itself in several ancillary works connected with the Critical Edition. Among these were (1) a critical edition of the Harivansa which is traditionally regarded as a Khila-p/40?of the Mahabharata, (2) a comprehensive index of the verse-quarters occurring in the Critical Edition, (3) publication of only the critically constituted text of the Great Epic, and (4) an Epilogue of the Critical Edition. I am glad to report that, since September 1966, substantial progress has been made in respect of all these works. One out of the proposed two volumes of the Critical Edition of the Harivariga and four out of the proposed six volumes of the traiika-Index have been published so far. And it gives me great pleasure to be able to release today, on the fifty-fourth anniversary of the foundation of the Institute, the first volume of the critically constituted text of the Mahabharata. It is proposed to publish the entire constituted text of the Epic in four volumes of about 1000 pages each. It is hardly necessary to say here anything about the methodology of the Mahabharata textual criticism. It has been set forth in great detail in the Prolegomena of the Adiparvan and the introductions to the other Parvans in the Critical Edition. It may, however, be emphasized that the constituted text as presented here by no means claims to be the text of Un-Mahabharata, that ideal but impossible desideratum. But, at the same time, it does claim, with due modesty, to represent the most ancient text of the Mahabharatta that can be reconstructed on the basis of all available manuscript and allied evidence. In & sense, it is the ancestor of all extant manuscripts of the Epic. It is a text, which, on the one hand, is cleansed of all later accretions and errors of copy
| SR No. | 004321 |
| Book Title | Mahabharat Samhita Part 01 |
| Original Sutra Author | N/A |
| Author | Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute |
| Publisher | Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute |
| Publication Year | 1971 |
| Total Pages | 886 |
| Language | Sanskrit, Hindi |
| Classification | Book_Devnagari |
| File Size | 19 MB |