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WEBER ON THE RAMAYANA.
JUNE 7, 1872.]
177
of being employed as chronological capital for Ramdyana (and it is a very perplexing one) is the determining the time of the composition of the great extent of the work, which shows that it poem itself.
cannot have been the composition of one poet And with reference to this part of the subject, only, but that centuries must have contributed to I think it desirable that we should, in the first mould it into its present form. The natural replace, investigate such data bearing on the timesult of this has been that the text has been split of the composition of the Ramdyana as can be up into several distinctly separate recensions. furnished by internal evidence, and that we should Indeed we can say with almost perfect truth that then collect the external data for the existence there are as many texts as there are manuscripts of the poem, so far as these are to be found in or editions It And a further consequence has been Indian literature and elsewhere.
that even within these individual recensions there The first point then which meets us in connec- have been found numerous contradictions and obtion with the internal evidence furnished by the vious additions, which afford sufficient evidence of
houde stad been the time
bort of the vid
Nylo, and
the Panchalammata
. We are unfortunately unable to determine exactly the time to which the account given in Dio Chrysostom ought to be assigned. My own view, which I have stated in the Ind. Stud. pp. 164 and 165, and which has received the approval of Benfey (Gött. Gel. An. 1852 p. 127), that it should be assigoed to the time after Pliny, who would hardly have left so important a fact unnoticed, still seems to me preferable to that of Lassen, (Ind. Alt. II., Anhang p. xlix), namely, that we are indebted to Megasthenes for the report in question. But at least I can no longer support my opinion as I endeavoured to do there, by the argument that the account given by Dio Chrysostom in the same passage, to the effect that the Great Bear is not visible to the people of India is to be regarded as a mariners' report brought to Europe (from the South of India), also after the time of Pliny; for As Lassen has justly pointed out in the place already quoted, this report is mentioned so far back as by Oneskritos and by Megasthenes. (On this subject, see also Ind. Stud. IL. 408, 9.) And in any case, the circumstance that Pliny makes no mention of the Indian Homer is at least no proof that up till that time no information on the subject had reached Europe ; for he might have omitted to mention this just in the same way as he left unmentioned the information regarding the Great Bear. It must be admitted at the same time that both omissions are remarkable enough in a man like Pliny.
+ With reference to the various recensions of the Rámiyana, we are hardly able to say with certainty at present, which of them should be considered as most closely corresponding with the original. The so-called Bengal recension has found its keenest opponent in Hall, who speaks of it, in his edition of Wilson's translation of the Vishnu Purana (II. 190), as a modern depravation," and even characterises it as "spurious" (ibid III. 817). Guerin, too, in his Astronomie Indienne (p. 289 note), refers to it as a production of the 11th century. Hall justly describes Schlegel's edition as " composite;" and, in his opinion, the "genuine Ramayana" is contained only in the editions of Calcutta (which unfortunately I am acquainted with only through Muir's extracts), and of Bombay. (He has seen in India no fewer than seven commentaries" on the real Ramayana?" and one of these WAS # manuscript nearly 500 VAATA old, with wooompanying text.)-At the same time, I have made it, I hope, sufficiently clear by the arguments I have adduced from the Berlin MSS.,- partly in my Catalogue of the Berlin Sansierit M88, p. 119 ff., partly in the Indische Streifen, IL 240 ff., partly, in the present paper passim, that these views of Hall's must undergo considerable modification. These Berlin MSS. written throughout in Devanagari, partly correspond to a large extent with Gorresio's text, and therefore lend it additional autbority; and partly they represent, as compared with Gorresio and with the Bombay edition, # perfectly independent text; in other words they form a recension for themBelves. And there is no reason to doubt that the same result will be frequently repeated as further new MSS. are brought to light and compared with one another. In fact, it could hardly be otherwise, considering the manner in which 30 national and popular poem must have been handed down, beyond a doubt merely by means of oral tradition in the Uttarakanda mention is made continually and exclusively of recitation of the poem): the wonder really is that after all there is so much substantial harmony among the different versions. And this is the more surprising when we
consider also that the different provinces of India had each their own peculiar styles (riti), which differed from one another in important respects and that consequently the work of Valmiki, as it gradually spread over the whole of India, would be exposed to the modifying influences which such a state of things would naturally exert. For our earliest and at the same time most detailed information regarding this variety of style, we are indebted to the (Kavyadari'a, I. 40—101) of Dapdin, who in all probability lived as far back as the 6th century; and Pandit Premachandra Tarkavågis'n, in the commentary with which be has accompanied his edition of this work in the Bibliotheca Indica, Calc. 1863), has made a most admirable collection of what is known on this subject from other sources, namely, from the works of Vamana, Bhojaraja, Mammata (Kavyaprakdi'a, IX. 4) and Vis'vanátha (Sahityadarpaņa, Chap. IX $ 624-630). Compare on this subject the detailed statements from the works of the first two of these suthors namely, the Kavyálamkára of Vamana, and the Sarasvattkanthabharana of Bhojaraja, as found in Aufrecht's Ca alogue, fol. 207, 208a ; according to 2108 ibid. the same subject is specially treated also in Chap. IX. of the Alamkárakaustubha of Karnapûrs. And in this matter it so happens that the Bengalis (Gauda) play quite & conspicuous róle. Dandin recognises only two kinds of style, that of the Bengalis (Gaudi) and that of the Vidarbha (Vaidarbhi). Vimana and Mammata mention also the style of the Panchala (Pânchalf), Visvanaths speaks of the Lati style, and Bhojaraja adds to these the Avantika and the Magadhi styles. Instead of Gauda, Dandin usos also the name, paurastya L.50, 83, or adakshinatya L 80; while he designates the Vaidarbhi style as that of the dakshinatya. T., 60.) It is greatly to be wished that some one would work up carefully and thoroughly the details that are furnished in so rich abundacce by these passages; I content myself with remarking here that the style of the Vaidarbha is described as having the preference on account of its being smooth, simple and universally intelligible, while that of the Gauda is characterised as having the opposite qualities. Whether the latter, and especially the detailed statements in Dandin, &c., are to be understood as having in some way & reference to the recension of the Ramayana edited by Gorresio, and by him, following the example of Schlegel, designated as Gaudans"-and if so, to what extentare questions that cannot be answered without further special research. (The same remark holds good also of the socalled Bengal recension of the S'akuntals for the authenticity of which, and especially for its being truer to the original than the so-called Devanagari recension, Dr. R. Pischel has recently been contending very earnestly, in what is at all events a very valuable dissertation (Breslau 1870, De Kalidasae S'Akuntali recensionibus, pp. 67); though to be sure Stenzler had expressed his opinion to the same effect a long time ago (vide Hallesche LiteraturZeitung, 1844, p. 561 ff.). Gorresio's recension received the name "Gaudana" on two grounds : 1. Because the MSS. on which it was founded are written for the most part in the Bengali character; 2. Because the statement in Carey and Marshman, I. p. 212 that the text from this place to the foot of p. 214 [I. 15,69-80 in Gorresio is to be found only in the copies of the Gaura Pandits and not in those of the south or west"-is especially pertinent to this recension (v. Gorr. 1. 19, 1-10), while the verses in question are wanting in Schlegel (in I. between 18 and 19)
