Reviews Of Diffeent Books

SR No.: 269555
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Ashok Aklujkar
Publisher: Ashok Aklujkar
Total Pages: 7
Language: English
Classification: Article
File Size: 2 MB

Page 2

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could get photographs of the new Jaisalmer fragments, could have, I suppose, acquired photographs even of the old Jaisalmer ms. Instead he has worked with photographs of a transcript of that ms. Similarly, of the south Indian sources, the most basic source accessible at present is the transcript deposited at the Government Oriental Manuscripts Library, Madras, since its original, the Malabar ms., has not so far been traced. K does not utilise this transcript in any direct way. His reliance is probably on a transcript of this transcript, or on a transcript of the Adyar Library transcript (No. TR398) of this transcript (cf. Preface and p. XI).6 Moreover, he is content with having a transcript only for the last two chapters. Obviously he sees no gain in ascertaining the accuracy of De's 'second-hand' readings!
It seems that in India two definitions of the term 'critical edition' are current. One definition is the same as the one adumbrated in the science of textual criticism and assumed by most Western Indologists who have attempted text-editing. The other definition seems to say that any edition based on more than one manuscript and reporting variant readings here and there is critical. K's editions of the Dhvanyaloka and the VJ are critical in this latter, 'weaker' sense. There is no attempt in them to relate manuscripts or to establish objective grounds for acceptance or rejection of readings. In the present VJ edition there is not even a clear description of the text-sources. I had to piece together several disjointed statements to understand roughly what materials were available to K. Since some of these statements are unfortunately ambiguous (see note 5), I am not sure even now that I understand the bases of K's edition precisely.
Another blow to our normal expectations about a critical edition is delivered by the procedure K has adopted for recording variant readings. Whether an editor works with photocopies or transcripts, we expect him to give the preferred text followed by an account of all variations or all significant variations (some editors choose not to report the ungrammatical, metrically faulty, or nonsensical readings). If K had three sources (photocopy of a transcript of the old Jaisalmer ms., photocopy of the new Jaisalmer ms. leaves, and a direct or indirect transcript of the Madras GOML transcript), as seems to have been the case, could he not have constituted the best possible text with their help and recorded their divergences or significant divergences from that text in a certain sequence? Instead, up to the pre-résumé portion of De's edition, he almost mechanically relegates De's readings to the footnotes wherever they happen to differ from his source. This is not only contrary to the usual practice, it results in making a number of sentences unnecessarily problematic, and leads to the inconsistency of occasionally having to presuppose footnote readings in the translation. Also, a serious student of Kuntaka's work is required to use De's edition beside K's; he cannot be fully served by K's edition. More importantly, what is the justification for the removal of De's readings? As far as K informs us, his sole basis for this part of the text is a photocopy of a transcript of the old Jaisalmer ms. Since De too had the same transcript available for use (see notes 5 and 10) and compared its readings with those of the Madras transcript, how can the readings he considered superior be removed through an exclusive acceptance of only one of his sources? Or, are the readings accepted by K based on the new Jaisalmer leaves? In that case, why does K not refer to those leaves until he is well into the third unmesa (p. 154) and why does he refer only to "a second transcript of the one supplied to De" on p. XII while discussing settlement of the pre-résumé text?? His remark, "I have given substantially the readings confirmed by it [= the transcript]," on the same page is also intriguing. What is "substantially" supposed to mean in the present context? How can one singlemindedly reproduce the readings of a northern transcript/manuscript when the southern manuscripts are generally known for preserving older readings? The procedure K has adopted shifts the burden of critical selection from the editor to the reader. If the latter does not happen to specialise in the area of Sanskrit poetics or textual criticism, he will need informed guidance from the editor. Since there is no such guidance in the present edition, he will be either misled, if he puts his trust in the editor's selection, or frustrated, once he notices that the readings adopted by the editor frequently do not make sense.
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In the résumé portion, K mostly abandons his policy of relegating De's readings to the footnotes. From now on he refers to De only rarely (e.g. pp. 245-6). On p. 147, corresponding to De's p. 160, he informs us that ms. B ends with the expression yas tasmad, although he has nowhere clarified what ms. B is. That the reference is to the earlier known Jaisalmer manuscript or De's transcript thereof is something left for us to find out. 10 Then suddenly on p. 154, references to ms. "J (= Jaisalmer New Palm-leaf fragments)" begin to appear. Why K did not refer to this source in the preceding portion although it contains a significant part of that portion remains a mystery. What the source of words included in parentheses between p. 147 and p. 154 is also remains a mystery. References to KLV, which the reader is expected to guess as standing for the Kalpa-lata-viveka (ed. Murari Lal Nagar and Harishankar Shastry Ahmedabad: L. D. Institute of Indology, 1968, with an English introduction by P. R. Vora, L. D. Series 17) also begin to appear, giving the impression that the KLV does not quote anything from the first 150 pages of the VJ, which, of course, cannot be the case. K also seems to have implicitly assumed that there are no problematic readings in the first 150 pages which could be elucidated or improved upon by comparison with VJ passages quoted in later works. This too is not the case. Furthermore, it is obvious that the readings identified by K as found in ms. J cannot be the entirety of readings peculiar to J. K's use of parentheses is also perplexing. We find everything from single syllables to whole passages given in parentheses after p. 147.11 Yet there is no explanation of what the parentheses indicate, especially where they flank entire passages. 12 K (p. XII) says that he has used brackets (by this term, I suppose he means ")" or "[]") to indicate the "minimal verbal changes" he has introduced to emend "very few misreadings of a serious nature." However, on pages such as 155 and 161-62, there are several lines that appear in rectangular parentheses. One cannot view them as minimal verbal changes. Nor do they seem to be shaped by any awareness of the factors (haplography, etc.) that usually cause corruption in manuscripts. 13 Lastly, the mention of J in footnotes comes to an end without any explanation on p. 248. A few equally intriguing references are made thereafter to "M" and "Ms." on pp. 249, 257 and 258. These, I presume, stand for the copy K had of the Madras transcript. On p. XII, K states: "... for the résumé portion, I have not given any indication in detail of the scribal errors in the Madras transcript because that would take a volume and would not be of any help to general students or scholars." The presumption is clearly that a record of readings is not a vital part of a critical edition and that no one is likely to 'rescue' sensible readings from the scribal errors any more than K has!14
Thus, what we mostly have in the book under review is a 'critical' edition without manuscript variants! In its first part (pp. 1-153) we have been asked to make do with the readings of an earlier edition, based on transcripts, as variants to be content with buttermilk instead of creamy curds; in its second part, the editor has thrown a few crumbs of manuscript readings at us as it pleased him.
The reader's problems are compounded by the oversights, inaccuracies and inconsistencies in recording whatever readings have in fact been recorded.
(a) In fn. 7 of p. 167 we read "Misreading in Ms.," but there is no specification of the ms. (b) For the expression sabda-sobhatifaya-fünyam in line 20 of p. 7, we read in fn. 10: *fobha. K's intention is to point out that De's reading begins with fobha and does not contain the word sabda, but fn. 10 is incapable of expressing that intention. It is also inconsistent with a fn. like fn. 2 on the same page; just as that fn. says "pratyekam omitted," fn. 10 should have said "tabda omitted."
(c) In illustrative verse 1.11 (prakāśa-sväbhavyam...), De's edition reads tatha tatra na which makes sense as Dvivedi's (edition 6 below, p. 18) Hindi translation establishes. K reads tatha yatra na but does not note De's reading or translate in such a manner as to justify the choice of yatra.
(d) On p. 58 (lines 9-10), there is no difference between the reading accepted and the one in fn. 2.