Kansvaho

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

Page 12

INTRODUCTION
xi
errors is very great in both the transcripts. Some of these scribal errors have their origin in the Malayālam script itself in which v & p are quite similar and u, 1 & i are much alike ; and the copyists, being ignorant of Prākrit, were likely to misread the original. In reproducing the Sanskrit Chāyā, the copyists are more careful and their performance is not so bad as in the Präkrit portion. The interchange between a double consonant and a consonant preceded by an anusvara is due to the device of Nõlli, a fat zero, used in Grantha, Kannada, Malayalam and Telugu scripts when Prākrit was being written. The difference between the sign which indicates anusvara and the Nõlli which indicates that the following consonant is to be doubled is very little : the former is a small zero and the latter a fat one ; and the scribes who were ignorant of Prakrit were sure to confuse these two signs. Even the Madras Ms., though written in Devanāgari, uses some Nõllis on the top of the letters now and then ; and, if I remember right, the local Devanāgari transcript at Trivandrum used something like the sign of equality on the heads of letters to indicate that the following letter is to be doubled. This Nõlli device gives duplicates like khkh, ghgh etc., but I have uniformly adopted the standard convention of writing kkh, ggh etc. Anunāsika is unknown to these Mss. I have used I for | throughout.
2. PRESENTATION OF THE TEXT AND CHĀYA
When I first read the Text, the scribal errors simply bewildered me. But a close study of the work with the help of both the transcripts enabled me to fill the gaps, to correct the scribal errors and to hit on the right reading. The fact that Rāma Pânivāda has written a commentary on the Prāksta Prakāśa of Vararuci was enough to indicate that he might have