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DHŪRTĀKHYANA :
whether; according to the Purāņic legend, Kicakas were accommodated in and born from bamboo-hollows (1. *3*): whether the lotus was caught stuck at Vişnu's navel (I. *5*); whether Karna was born through the ear (I. *6*); whether Drupada's bow is described in the epic to contain Nāgas etc. (II. *5*); whether Hanumat climbed the mountain-like Jatayu (II, *6*); etc. If these events have no basis in the Purānic stories, the very edge of Haribhadra's criticism is blunted; and his denunciation of Purāņic legends becomes impertinent.
Before we raise the question, whether Haribhadra has really taken liberty with some of the legends, we have to remember that our epics and Purāṇas have not come down to us exactly in the same form in which they were current at the time of Haribhadra. Their texts have been subjected to so many vicissitudes in different localities and for centuries together that the authenticity of every episode, nay of every passage, is to be judged on its own merits. This is fully demonstrated by the critical edition of the Mahābhārata. The condition of the text-tradition of the Purāņas is much worse. They present such an indiscriminate fusion of text-tradition and such a bewildering medley of myths that the wits of a text-critic would be completely stunned. Very good results have been achieved by the study of Mbh. Mss.; and the late lamented Dr. V. S. Sukthankar has brilliantly sketched the pros and cons of the text-variation in the Mbh. in his following observations": "All the difficulties in the explanation of this phenomenal variation vanish, however, as soon as we assume that the epic was handed down from bard to bard originally by word of mouth, as is clearly implied by tradition. That would explain, without any strain or violence, the existence of the mass of variants, of differences in sequence and of additions and omissions. If the text has been preserved, for any considerable period of time, only in memory and handed down by word of mouth, those are just the changes that could not possibly be avoided. It is evident that no great care would be layished on the text by these custodians of the tradition to guard it against corruption and elaboration, or against arbitrary emendation and normalization: to reproduce the received text, which was not guarded by canonical authority or religious sanction, with any degree of precision would be neither attempted by the bards nor required of them. Whenever and wherever the text was then written down--and it was probably written down independently in different epochs and under different circumstances--these transmissions by word of mouth must have contaminated the written text and innumerable variations in it. The assumption of some such complicated derangement, beyond the normal vicissitudes of transmission, is necessary to account for the abnormal discrepancies and strange vagaries of the Mahābhārata manuscript tradition. In other words, we are compelled to assume that even in its early phases the Mahābhārata textual tradition must have been not uniform and simple, but multiple and polygenous." In another context Dr. V. S. Sukthankar has observed thus with regard to citations; and what is true about
1 The Adiparvan, Poona 1933, Prolegomena, p. 79.
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