________________
3
Chandra Chatterji himself, and that he gave it up as the Ms. material he had in hand was very bad. The description of the MSS. used by him is not given. But after comparing the actual corrupt readings, some of which are noted by him also, I find that his text appears to be based on a copy of the Ms. ka described above. He also records a few readings of kha. As our sources are nearly identical, I have not noted down the readings of this printed text, called c here; but some of them I have discussed in the Notes. With the help of c I could check some uncertain readings in the 2nd and 3rd formes.
INTRODUCTION
This is all the material that was accessible to me after good many efforts. For editing the Prakrit text, ka is the only MS. available with a few readings of kha. The Curator's Office does not suggest any immediate relation between ka and kha, though they belong to one and the same locality. The Ms. kha does show independent readings; it contains some passages not found in ka; and here and there it shows different arrangement of speeches and stage-directions. They show some mutual independence: one is not the direct copy of the other. The full copy of kha is not before me; so the siglum kha just stands for 135 entries of various readings. The editor, therefore, had to constitute the Prakrit text mainly on the basis of ka. The readings supplied by kha are sensible and at times superior to those of ka; but, as their number was limited, their advantage could be taken only in a few places. In all the cases where the readings from both are available, they are clearly indicated in the foot-notes. Whenever a reading of ka is noted, it does not mean, unless specifically mentioned, that the text presented in the body agrees with that of kha: it only means that the editor, for reasons elaborated below, had to improve upon the actual readings of ka which, in important cases, are recorded in the foot-notes with all care and fidelity. If the reading of kha has been accepted in preference to that of ka, it is made quite explicit by giving the readings of both in those places.
As the Prakrit text is primarily based on the мs. ka, we have to scrutinize its nature more carefully and note some of its important traits. First, it contains many evident blunders which can be unquestionably attributed to indifferent copying; some of them could not be called genuine readings. Secondly, the Ms. exhibits consistently certain peculiarities which deserve to be explained before they are correctly emended without noting the variants: at times short
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
