Kansvaho

Author(s): Rama Paniwada, A N Upadhye
Publisher: Motilal Banarasidas

Page 11

KAMSAVAHO
T-Three other Mss. of Kamsavaho with Sk. Chāyā are knowr. from Travancore. Two of them belong to the Palace Library of His Highness the Maharaja of Travancore, but they are incomplete. The third, which contains the text and the Chāyā of all the four cantos, belongs to a private library in Travancore. It is a palm-leaf Ms. written in Malayalam script. I have seen it personally in the Exhibition of Mss. arranged at the time of the All-India Oriental Conference, Trivandrum, 1937. Its description was given thus : 'No. 2533, Substance : Palmleaf, Size : 9" x 11", Leaves : 57 with 8 lines per page and 20 words per line, Script : Malayalam, No. of Granths 600, Owner : the same as that of No. 2533A (i.e., Vasudeva Sarma Avl. of Vattapalli Mattom, Sucîndram). Through the kindness of the Curator, Govt. Oriental Mss. Library, Trivandrum, I have received a Devanāgarī transcript, containing text and Chāyā, which I have designated as I in this Edition. This is now presented by me to the Rajaram College Library, and its R. No. is 24619. There is another Devanāgarī transcript of the palm-leaf Ms. in the Oriental Library, Trivandrum, and through the kindness of Pt. K. SAMBASHIVA SHASTRI I had noted down the readings from it during my short stay at Trivandrum; but as these readings substantially agree with those of T, I have not recorded them separately.
The Prākrit Text preserved in both the transcripts, M and T, is very unsatisfactory. The number of lacunae, scribal errors and other irregularities is greater in T than in M. So far as the Präkrit verses are concerned, both these transcripts use { for l. They constantly confuse between p&v, d & dh, p & ph, kh & gh, k & t, between a, i & u, between am & ā, u & 1 and between a long vowel and a vowel followed by an anusvāra. Very often consonants expected to be double stand single preceded by an anusvāra ; and when we want the anusvāra, we find the subsequent consonant a double one instead : the number of such