Bruhat Katha kosha

Author(s): Harishen Acharya,
Publisher: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan

Page 35

BRHAT-KATHAKOŚA
number of different readings is almost negligible. Some of the readings of Ja agree with those of Pha, but the marginal corrections thereof agree with those of Pa. With the meagre evidence that is at our disposal, it is not possible to assert any direct relation between these three Mss. The texttradition presented in them shows mutual contamination, and possibly they go back to a common source a few generations of Mss. back. There are some significant lapses in all the three Mss. inherited from the common source. On p. 96 of this edition, we see that all the three Mss. interchanged the places of verses, Nos. 283-84, even against the trend of the story. The copyist of Ms. Pa did detect it, and he has added a marginal suggesti Secondly, on p. 226, after verse No. 293, there is a confusion in the arrange. ment of lines. I have already indicated in the foot-note how the lines require to be rearranged to give a continuous story. My explanation of this confusion is like this. In one of the earlier Mss., which lies at the basis of the tradition of the text preserved in Pa, Pha and Ta, tl might have skipped over a few lines through oversight; but realizing this omission later, he added them perhaps on the margin of the next page putting a remark 'agre prşthe likhitam asti' at the place where they were missed. The subsequent copyists transcribed this remark at the right place, but incorporated the missing lines, written on the next page, at a wrong place with the result that we have a few lines grossly misplaced in that context. Lastly, on p. 40, a common significant slip is seen in all the three Mss. that they put three lines in verse No. 71 when, in fact, the second line of No. 65 appears to have been missed. These typical cases go to confirm that these three Mss. go back to a common source in the near past.
ii) Presentation of the Text The text of the Kathakosa, presented here, cannot claim to be critical in the strict sense of the term ; but it is authentic within the limits of the Mss. material described above. All the three Mss. show a close kinship and represent identical recension, though they are not the copies of one another. A close comparison helped the editor to eliminate many scribal errors and ascertain uncertain readings. As the text is being edited for the first time, I have proceeded with utmost conservatism. This text, moreover, belongs to a tract of medieval Sanskrit literature which shows important and interesting grammatical and lexical peculiarities that have
racted the attention of philologists like Jacobi, Hertel, Bloomfield and others. I did not want that the linguistic peculiarities should be levelled down under any rigorous editorial discipline. So the agreement of the three Mss. has been uniformly upheld. The general spelling and other outward features of the text are presented in a standardised form. The orthographical peculiarities like ch for cch, bho for bhoh, udyot for uddyot, sanmukha for sarmukha, hk for sk etc., however, are retained, because they are so written by all the three Mss. The Sandhis have been restored where it could be