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Introduction
1. The Need For A Critical Edition :
When scholars of eminence and learned Pandits have edited the various texts on Sanskrit poetics, one should not have felt the need for bringing out a critical edition of “Prakrit Verses In Sanskrit Works On Poetics." With due deference to these learned scholars and Pandits, I cannot help making a remark that Prakrit verses have received far less attention than they deserve. At many places the text is corrupt, sometimes very corrupt.' In some places the Sanskrit Chāyā does not agree with the corresponding Prakrit passages, often partly and sometimes wholly. There is a large number of Prakrit verses drawn as illustrations from works which are lost and are yet to be discovered. In the foot-notes to their texts the editors simply remark 'Durbodhā or avisadā or aspastā iyaṁ gāthā' and express their helplessness rendering the Prakrit gātha intelligible. They only remain content by adding a question - mark when they are confronted with a corrupt reading. Owing to want of sufficient knowledge of Prakrit some perpetrate ludicrous blunders while translating Prakrit verses into English or modern Indian languages, and do injustice to Prakrit poets. It is the duty of modern research scholars to present the text of the Prakrit verses as correctly as possible by undertaking a comparative study. Vigorous efforts must be made to trace their primary sources and where that is not possiblé - on account of the irreparable loss of Prakrit poetic works — to hunt secondary sources such as works on Prakrit Grammar, Prosody and other works on Poetics to find if any of the corrupt verses have been cited in any of these works. References to the primary or secondary sources often help a curious reader to refer to the context in which the verses occur and thus facilitate understanding. Many scholars believed that the number of these Prakrit verses could not be large since a good many of them are repeated from early standard works like Dhvanyāloka and Kavyaprakāśa. When I first undertook the work of restoring the text of the illustrative Prakrit verses I was myself not aware of the stupendous nature of my task. No doubt, a large number of these verses are repeated by various writers on poetics; still the fact remains that the total number of Prakrit verses cited as illustrations far exceeds
1) Vide the section on Corrupt Text, infra.
