Halas Sattasai

Author(s): Hermen Tieken
Publisher: Leiden

Page 15

itself is lost and will henceforth be referred to as the archetype. . The text of the South-Indian branch is in many respects the most authentic one available. As to the order of the Gathās, which differs for each recension, the most original one is found in the North-Indian branch.
The stemma should provide the basic arguments in reconstructing the text of the archetype, in respect of the order as well as of the text of the Gāthās. This does not mean that the reconstruction has become an automatic process. There appear to be several cases where it is impossible to rely solely on the stemma, for instance, in the case of variation in the forms of the words, which appear to have been considerably influenced by Sanskrit in both the branches of the MSS. The method of reconstruction and several recurrent problems encountered will be discussed in Chapter 2 of Part II.
In each case the final test applied to the text is the translation. The Sattasaf has already been translated many times and into many languages, European as well as Indian. Of these only Weber's German translation is critical in that it is verifiable. My translation differs from Weber's in many instances often simply because it is based on a different text. Generally, however, the differences have another reason. : It is to be noted that Weber relied heavily on the traditonal interpretations found in the Sanskrit commentaries which in many MSS accompany the text. For the meanings of words Weber referred in particular to Hemacandra's Prakrit grammar and the same author's Deśīnāmamālā (twelfth century A.D.) and to Dhanapāla's Pāiyalacchi (tenth century A.D.). The latter two works are Prākrit dictionaries. It will appear that often the interpretations given in the Sanskrit commentaries rest on misunderstandings and have been based on faulty divisions of words or compounds, on vague associations, preconceived notions or etymological speculations. Furthermore a considerable number of rules and words included in the above-mentioned grammar and dictionaries appear to be due to their authors' or their predecessors' attempts to account for the derivation and meaning of certain words of, among other texts, the Sattasat. These authors' methods do not differ significantly from those seen in the commentaries.
One of the conclusions that may be drawn on the basis of the above is that between the time of the composition of the Gathās of the