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Janakiharanam by Kumaradása. Ed. by S. PARANAVITANA and C. E. GODAKUMBURA, published by Shri Lanka Sahitya Mandalaya (Ceylon Academy of Letters), 1967, pp. i-lxxii, 1-401.
This is an excellent and a complete critical edition of the famousMaha kävya by the Sinhalese poet Kumāradāsa who, according to one tradition, was contemporary of Kalidasa. Apparently this work enjoyed much popularity at one time, since it has been cited in many anthologies and other grammatical and literary works both in India and Ceylon. But in spite of this, the work had remained practically unknown for quite a long time. Even as late as 1947, S. K. DE while writing his History of Sanskrit Literature had to say, "The incomplete and not wholly satisfactory recovery of Kumaradasa's work makes it difficult to make a proper estimate " (p. 187). The Janakiharaya was first noticed by AUFRECHT in his edition of the Unädisutraurti (1859). In 1891. Sthavira Dharmārāma published in Ceylon for the first time the text of the poem upto verse 22 of canto XV (the proper extent of the work, as we now know, being 20 cantos). This text, however, was based not on any manuscript of the poem itself-no manuscript having been known to exist in those days-but was reconstructed from Sanne, a wordfor-word Sinhalese version of the poem made in the twelfth century. NANDARGIKAR'S edition of the first ten cantos, based on the above reconstructed text, was the first Indian Devanagari edition of the poem published in 1907.
A complete manuscript of the original text of the Janakiharana was discovered by M. Ramakrishna KAVI and S, K. Ramanatha SASTRIAR in Malabar in 1920. A copy of this manuscript is now preserved in the Government Oriental Manuscripts Library, Madras. Subsequently a few more manuscripts of the poem, containing the complete text or a part of it, were also found.
The present edition of the complete text in 20 cantos is chiefly based on the Madras manuscript with some help derived from the other manuscripts and the reconstructed version of the Sinhalese Sanne. Apparently the following remark made by S. K. DE in his Hist. of Skt.Lit. (P. 186, fn. 2) about the Madras manuscript does not seem to be justified: "The Madras MS existing in the Govt. Orient, MSS Library contains twenty cantos, but it is a very corrupt transcript of an unknown original, and it is not known-how far it is derived ultimately from the Sinhalese Sanna." On the other hand, as the editors have pointed out, the text now made available clearly shows that almost all the blemishes, like the use of khalu and iva at the beginning of a verse, which the critics had noticed in the Janakiharaya belong not to the original text of the poem but to its redactions.
The usefulness of the published edition has beer. considerably increased by one of the editors contributing a number of indexes and some text-critical notes.
The information given about the poet (pp. li- xix) is very valuable. It refers to a tradition current in Ceylon in the 15th century which ascribed the authorship of the
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