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 7

152 REVIEWS is not likely to be original. Note the genitives preyasah and tasya in the vrtti immediately preceding and following the karika. Secondly, the manuscript is obviously broken and damaged at the point where the variant reading occurs. It is likely to be a result of guesswork based on partially preserved letters. 17 As far as I can ascertain, De too is silent about this peculiarity of the manuscripts. 18 On p. 221, K gives an intelligible version of a Pkt. verse which De (1961: 208) found "too corrupt and fragmentary" in his sources. The same applies to p. 232 corresponding to De p. 214. 19 I assume this stands for 12%" X 17". 20 (a) This may mean between 1243 and 1293 A.D. or between 1343 and 1393 A.D. In a strict usage, the period including 1301 and 1400 should count as the 14th century of the Vikrama era, but occasionally it is noticed that Indian scholars think of periods such as 1401-1499 as 14th century, etc. (b) Here I am translating from Gujarati. The catalogue contains two more details which read in Gujarati as "sarnha. Srestha. da. Srestha." Since I could not see in the catalogue any explanation of the short-forms samha and da, I do not know what they mean. As sarha is followed by the adjectives srestha, madhyama (p. 1), jirna-praya, and atijirna (e.g., on p. 169), I would guess that it stands for samhati 'togetherness, continuity', meaning in effect 'the physical condition of the manuscript leaves,' a device to indicate whether the leaves are holding together, have fallen apart or are about to fall apart. The other short-form da probably stands for dasa meaning in the present context 'the condition of writing. However, a certain ambiguity seems to have prevailed while these descriptive devices were being used. In the description of no. 327 (our J3), Punya-vijayaji's catalogue reads "samha. Srestha. da. Srestha" as above, but then goes on to comment prati akhi bhamgi ga-eli ane atijima che 'the ms. is completely broken and very much worn out', which is contradictory, if the interpretation suggested above is assigned to the forms samha and da. Probably, Punya-vijayaji too sensed the difficulty and replaced both samha and da in the following part of the catalogue with sthi standing for sthiti and meaning "condition.' 21 K (p. IX) says that S. K. Ramanatha Shastri was also associated with the work of transcribing. He might have culled this detail from De's 1923 or 1928 edition, to neither of which I have access at present. 22 I have reproduced these details from p. 176, entry 1887 of M. B. Emeneau's A Union List of Printed Indic Texts and Translations in American Libraries, New Haven, Connecticut: American Oriental Society, 1935. 23 (a) This guess is based on the fact that Emeneau (see note 22 above) does not record any variation in title. (6) According to Emeneau, the second edition has lxviii + 270 pages. Addendum regarding J2 and notes 5 and 10: In his letter of 7 September, 1982, K kindly informs me: "Two copies of the same Ms were prepared at Jaisalmir by one scribe; one of which was sent to De and the other preserved at Jaisalmir."Although K does not specify what his source for this information is, it makes good sense. Generally, scholars who have been issued transcripts are not expected to return them to the issuing library. It is, therefore, not very likely that De returned his copy and the copy was made no. 379 of the collection. Secondly, since J1 is such a valuable document, it is very probable that a scribe was asked to make two copies of it, one for De and one for internal use. The one for internal use then became no. 379. Thus, if K is right, we should speak of J2a (supplied to De), J2b (= No. 379), and J2c (photo-copy of J2b in K's possession).