Bhagwad Gita Vivechanatmak Shabdakosh

Author(s): Prahlad C Divanji
Publisher: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt Ltd

Page 24

Critical Word-Index to the Bhagavad gita
Pratinidhi Series No. 1 wherein all the additional stanzas and lines discovered by Schrader and the variants discussed by him and many others besides them had been taken notice of. Further in 1937 Šāstri Jivarām Kālidās of Gondal, Kathiavād, published a fresh edition of the Kāśmir recension based on a single MS., which he said, he had chanced to secure from Surat. According to him that MS. is in the form of a Pothi, containing both the Gita and the Harīvamsa and is dated Sarvat 1235 (A. D. 1178-79).' This is not a critical edition in the strict sense of that term, in that it does not contain any foot-notes as to any alternate readings in the Kāśmir recension. It nevertheless constitutes an additional edition of that recension inasmuch as (1) it is based on a MS. purporting to be the oldest one of that recension yet brought to light and that too obtained from an unimaginable source, (2) substantiaily agrees with those on which the previous editions had been based and (3) is preceded by an Introduction in which the question of the original extent of the work is considered with reference to the stanza 43.7 in the Bhīşmaparvan and with due regard to the previous attempts made by scholars to solve it and in which a conclusion different from that of Schrader has seen recorded, it being that the Gitā must have originally contained 745 stanzas, that the additional stanzas and half-stanzas included therein may have formed part of the missing 45 and that, therefore, the search for them must be continued. Lastly, Dr. Chintamani of Madras published in 1941 a scholarly edition of the work with the complete commentary of Rājānaka Rāmakavi alias Rāmakanţha named Sarvatobhadra as No. 14 of the Madras University Sanskrit Series. The manuscript material utilised by him for its press copy consisted of 5 MSS., one of which was the India Office MS utilised by Dr. Schrader and the remaining four obtained from the Bhandarkar Institute, Poona, three of which were quite complete. Dr. Kunhan Raja states in his Foreword to it that while this edition was in the press, another of the same recension with the same commentary liad been published from Poona in the Anandāśrama Sanskrit Series but that the former had the distinction of having been preceded by a scholarly Introduction and followed by two Indices, one as to the Ardhas (half-stanzas ) and the other as to the citations contained in the commentary, duly traced to their sources. So far as my present purpose is concerned it is distinguishable by the existence at the end of the Introduction of a Comparative Table of the readings adopted by Rāmakavi and Abhinavagupta throughout the work and by Bhāskara upto 7. 16 and by a discussion therein as to the original extent of the work.
1. According to Dr. Belvalkar (Bhagavadgită with the Commentary of Anandavardhana, p. 385) this Ms. itself is not of that year but is a copy of one of that year, made in Samvat 1544 (A.D. 1487-88).