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Reviews
THE MAHABHARATA, ITS GENESIS AND GROWTH-A Statistical Study by M. R. Yardi, Bhandarkar Oriental Research Insti tute, Poona, India, 1986, Pp. viii. 2, XIV, 235, Price Rs. 110/-.
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The Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute undertook to publish the Critical Edition of the Mabābharata with the objective of making available to scholars the oldest form of the text which could be reached on the basis of the available manuscripts (Prolegomena to Adiparvan p. LXXXVI). The result thus obtained was never claimed to be the Ur-Mabābhārata, not even the form in which the epic was narrated by Sabti in the Naimisa forest. It was admitted that the critical edition contained interpolations which must have been added to the original text, if there ever was one such, at a time which the manuscripts cannot reach. Hence in order to rid the Ur-text of these accretions an approach different from the one based on the manuscripts was necessary. Shri Yardi believes that a statistical approach would enable us not only to identify the original Bbärata and the interpolations but also determine the chronology of the additions. (Preface, p. vii).
Shri Yardi's statistical study is based on the form of the Anustubh, the most predominant metre of the epic. He has excluded from his analysis stanzas longer than the Anustubh and prose passages (as also Adhyayas having Jess than ten stanzas). The Anustubh, as is well known, has four quarters, each having eight syllables. In a quarter the fifth syllable is required to be short, the sixth long and the seventh alternately long and short. For the purposes of his statistical study, Shri Yardi has taken a line, i. e. two conse cutive quarters forming half the sloka, as a unit. This means that in his unit of 16 syllables, those syllables occurring at places 5, 13, 15 will be short, at 6, 7, 14 long. The remaining syllables can be either short or long. In a line, then, since in 10 out of 16 places the poet is free to use short or long syllables, this can give rise to many stylistic variations. Shri Yardi has based his study on these variations.
Shri Yardi started his statistical study of the critically constituted text some twelve years ago. The results of his preliminary investigations appeared, beginning 1978, in different journals. All these have been reprinted as appendices to the present work which contains full results of his study.
Jain Education International
In a brief Introduction (pp. I-XIV) the author tells us that as a result of his analysis he has been able to identify five different styles which he characterizes as A, Alpha, B. C, and Beta. Accordingly he concludes that there were four revisions of the original text composed by Vyäsa or Vaisampayana. The four revisions were made by Sûta Lomaharsapa, his son Sauti Ugraśravas,
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