Prakritadhyaya

Author(s): Kramdishwar, Satyaranjan Banerjee, Dalsukh Malvania, H C Bhayani
Publisher: Prakrit Text Society Ahmedabad

Page 28

INTRODUO TION
(iii) Emendations
§ 26. To edit a text like Kramadisyara's Prākrit grammar, some sort of emendations are necessary, where the readings of the text are exclusively incorrect and meaningless 88 can be inferred from the texts of other grammarians, earlier or later. If this is not done, I am afraid, the text will be full of misrepresentation of the characteristics of Prākrit language, because, an the readings of all these manuscripts as well as of the printed editions generally follow each other in forms and contents, and even in the case of omissions, mistakes, carelessness and slipshod penmanship eto., it is necassary to suggest some convenient emendations of the text in some rare cases (which are put in [ ] square brackets), not with the pretension of improving upon the author, but to arrive at the genuine readings of Kramadīśvara's Prākrit grammar which have suffered a good deal at he hands of the soribe through generation after generation of manusoript copying. Although the emended readings have been incorporated in the text, their variants have been recorded in the footnotes. It may be that with this procedure this edition may not claim to be critical in the true sense of the term, but it is hoped that this may be an authentio edition within the compass of the material available at our disposal, This does not mean that I have levelled down the linguistic peculiarities of the text, but the text itself is presented in a standardised form following the linguistic characteristics of Kramadīśvara as evidenced from the text. For example, under the sūtra-"sayyāderet" (1.4) the word "vandi" is given as one of the words belonging to this class of "akrtigana" in all the manuscripts as well as in the printed editions. Lassen's quotion contains "valli", although the ligature is "vandă" and this lends support to my emended reading as [vallā), because, in all the texts of the eastern grammarians, under the same "akytigana"; the word "valla" is found and not "vanda". In this way, iD ABOC,SS,L and P, the reading of the sūtra lobhārthe bāşpe (II. 71) is hazy and difficult to understand. It is found that Lassen bas tried to correct it as alobharthe eto., in order to arrive at the genuine reading of the text. But still the meaning of this sūtra is unintellingible. It can, therefore, be presumed, on the strength of other grammarians, that the sutra might have been composed in the