Indian Antiquary Vol 41

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 220

216
farà qugqca, quafa fofquear at मिति बुद्धवान्, यदाह-पूलं पुष्करमूलं च पौष्करं पुष्कराद्ववम् । काश्मीर पुष्करजा धीरं तत्पद्मवर्णकम् || Again, ou Amara II. 9, 51, Kshirasvamin comments: दृप्यति [ अनेन ] इप्सम् । चनादन्यधनमित्यर्थः यन्माला-द्रतं दध्यधनं तथा । एतच प्रप्स शरमिति भागुरिपाठे सरमति बुद्धा मालाकारो भ्रान्तः । कचिनस्तु नाशिता इत्ययमपि मालापाडेन विप्रलब्धः, बवाह दुर्ग:- बाणद्रप्सो शराविति। इत्यं तु समध्ये, तरन्उपरि शवमानं धनं दधि द्रप्सम् ।
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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
At times Kshirasvamin gives us a peep into the relative priority and posteriority of authors as preserved by tradition in his time, and, as such, it is of immense value. To cite one instance, on the word manda in II. 10, 19, of the Amarakosha he makes the following comment: मन्दते स्वपितीय मन्दः अत एव मदि जाज्य इति चान्द्रो धातुः । What he means is this. In the Dhatu-pátha of Panini we have मदि स्तुतिमोदमहस्वम क्रान्तिगतिषु, and here jadya is not given as another sense of the root mad. But Amara has mentioned manda in the sense of jada, and hence Chandra's Dhâtuvṛitti gives jadya as another meaning of mad. If this interpretation is correct, Kahirasvamin implies that Amara was prior to Chandra. Amara must therefore be taken to have flourished prior to circa A. D. 450 when Chandra or Chandragomin, teacher of,Vasurata, is supposed to have flourished. This rans quite counter to the view of Prof. Weber that Amara could not have lived much earlier than the 11th century A. D. But Weber's view cannot possibly be correct, for the well known line tantram pradhane siddhante from Amarakosha has been quoted in the Kábika vizaraṇa-pañchiká by Jinendrabuddhi who has been conclusively shown by Prof. Pathak to bave flourished in the first half of the 8th century. This is certain and indubitable. To this it may be added that "Stanlalas Julien quotes a Chinese translation of the Amarakosha called Fan-wai-kwo-yu, or Kü-sho-lun-yinyuen-sh', by Gunarata, a native of Ujjayini, who lived under the Emperor Wou-ti of the Tcheon dynasty (561-566), though he does not know whether it is still in existence." Further, Rao Saheb Prabhakar R. Bhandarkar has also given cogent reasons for supposing Amara to have lived earlier than Kalidasa. The word márjana, as shown by
Series).
[SEPTEMBER, 1912.
him, occurs in the Amarakosha, but not in the technical sense assigned to it by the Bharatiyanitya-Gastra, bnt this word occurs in ite technical sense in Kalidasa. Amara was thus prior to Kalidasa, i. e., prior to A. D. 400, the time of Chandragupta II, who is now taken by several scholars of repute to be the patron Vikramaditya of Kalidasa. This view exactly tallies with what KshirasvAmin insinnates, vis, that Amara was earlier than Chandragomin.
The importance of Kahfrasvamin's commentary does not end here. One of its unique features is the quotations it gives from the works of Sanskrit poets. To take one instance, in connection with the word haláhala occurring in the Amarakosha I. 7, 10, he cites the following verse: y far वाचि योषितां हृदये हालहलं महाविचम् t will be easily perceived that this verse is met with in Bhartrihari's Bringdra-Sataka. But it is worthy of note that all the printed editions of this Sataka have हारे हालाहलमेव केवल instead of इनवे हालहलं महाविधम्- But this verse is actually found in the Saundaranands of Asvaghosha in almost the same form in which it is cited by Kshirasvamin, the only difference being that the printed text has 8f instead of
We are thus very glad to find that the edition of Amarakosha together with Kshirasvamin's commentary has been undertaken by Mr. Oka. So far as Part I, which is out, is concerned, he seems to have done his work, on the whole, satisfactorily. His edition contains very few misprints, and is free from the errors which are discernible in what little of this commentary was published by Anundoram Borooah. Mr. Oka has also succeeded in tracing many more quotations in the original works of Sanskrit authors from which Kahirasvamin has cited them. One defect may, however, be mentioned. In tracing the quotations he has mentioned only the names of the author and his work in which they occur. without also specifying the number of the chapter and verse. It is sincerely hoped that this defect will be remedied in Part II, at any rate in the case of the quotations which are not well-known and cannot be at once found out even though we are informed in which works they occur. D. R. B.
1 Jour. R. As. Soc. for 1905, p. 45.
Max Müller's India: What can it teach us? p. 328. Canto VIII, verse 35.
Jour. Bomb. As Soc., Vol. XX, p. 306.
(The work has been edited by M. M. Haraprasada Shastri in the Bibliothera Indica