Bhagwad Gita Vivechanatmak Shabdakosh

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

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Critical Word-Index to the Bhagavadgitā
collation of all the available, over 50, MSS. in the long article intituled "The So-called Kāśmir Recension of the Bhagvadgita" contributed by Dr. Belvalkar, who had been entrusted with the work of editing that Parvan, published at pp. 211-51 of the New Indian Antiquary Vol. II. Therein, the learned doctor, after considering at length the sources and grounds relied on by Prof. Schrader for his said thesis, summed up the result, which stated succinctly is that the So-called Kasmir Recension of the Gita can at best be called a Kasmir Version of the Cita, that it could not have been current in that Province prior to the 8th century when Sankara lived, that it is not more authentic than that of Sankara and is therefore of secondary importance even when the additional stanzas and half-stanzas and the thirty odd cases of variants, which alone can stand the test of critical examination, are taken into consideration, that Schrader's conclusion is not, therefore, supported by them, that if it can be held to have been supported by them, we would have to admit the existence of two other recensions also, namely the Bengali and the Malayalam, and that "we can accordingly conclude that, except for about a dozen minor variants, the form of the Bhagavadgitä as preserved in the Bhasya of Sankarācārya is still the earliest and the most authentic form of the poem that we can reach on the basis of the available manuscript evidence".'
It is clear from the said article,2 that the distinguishing feature which the learned doctor had in mind when he said that the text of the Gitä current in Käśmir can be called a version not a recension, was that whereas a version should mainly embody modifications taking place in the course of transmission in the same script from a common codex and would, therefore, have a provincial circulation, a recension should connote more deliberate and far-reaching alterations in the text, often changing the tone and emphasis and transcending the limits of a script or province. As to this the classification of the MSS. of the Mahabharata made by the late Dr. Sukhtankar in his Prologomena to the Critical edition of the Adiparvan reprinted at pp. 10-140 of the Critical Studies in the Mahabharata and explained at pp. 17 and 97 thereof, seems no doubt to lend some colour to that distinction. According to that classification the Great Epic has two regional recensions, the Northern and the Southern and whereas the former is sub-divided into the Kaśmiri, Nepāli, Bengali and other sub
1. NIA II. pp. 230-31 The learned doctor had, agreeably to this view, published in 1941 an "Authorised text" of the Gita and stated in his Preface thereto that he was going to edit the same work on behalf of the Benares University and to append thereto an exhaustive word-index in which would be included even the words forming part of the compound words occurring in the Gita, Inquiries made in April 1945 showed that he had not till then done so.
2. Vide the foot-note at p. 214.