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C--Natya
Description. Country paper; somewhat thin, whitish and glazed; Devanagari characters; legible hand-writing; yellow and red pigment used for marking out verse-numbers, dandas, and some words and phrases; good many folios moth-eaten in the borders, in some cases the text being materially damaged; yellow pigment used for corrections in the Ms; colophons of chapters marked out by smearing red pigment; folio 69b quite blank while 69 half blank containing the following endorsement in the margin:
337-1
431
"6
मतमत्र पत्रं ग्रंथोयं काठियावाड प्रदेशस्थोऽमरेलीपुरे गोस्वामी श्रीलाल मणिजी विठ्ठलनाथानां गृहेति ॥ ""
The endorsement tells us that one leaf from the original being lost, has not been copied. It also tells us that the original of the present copy is with Gosvāmi Śrī Lālamaņiji Vitthalnatha, a resident of Amarelipura in Kathiawar; there are in all 36 chapters. Some of them have been wrongly numbered. No colophons have been recorded for chapters X, XVIII, XXI, XXIX, and XXXII. Chapters XX and XXVIII have been doubly numbered in their colophons. Colophon for chapter X must have been in the original Ms on the folio not copied in the present Ms as is clear from the marginal endorsement on folio 69a referred to above. Omissions of colophons for the remaining four chapters viz, XVIII, XXI, XXIX and XXXII can be explained away by the two cases of double numbering of chapters XX and and XXVIII; on each folio the number of the folio has been marked on the right-hand margin at the top and on the left-hand margin at the bottom. See Madras Catalogue No. 12999. Here it is remarked that the work is devided into 37 Adhyayas. Mr. M. R. Kavi's preface to his edition of the work in the Baroda Series also mentions 37 chapters according to the Northern or later recension but only 36 according to the Southern or earlier texts (Preface p. 6). Abhinavagupta himself states that the work consists of 36 chapters, though he himself comments upon the 37th chapter. The 37th chapter may be an addition by Abhinava or by one of the Vartikakaras
