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PREFACE
improvement on them, and this edition is conspicuous by the absence of any kind of notes. Even then the edition has helped me a lot to have a comparative study of its readings with those of other Mss., finally leading me to ascertain the actul text. Here and there some anomalies and corrupt readings are best renoved by a comparison with the Mss.
Now coming to the Mss. mention must be made firstly of A. It stands closer to B than any of the other Mss. It is beautifully written in Oriya character and the scribe distinguishes the commentary portion from the Sūtras by writing the latter in bold hand. Whereas the other Mss. are lacking in a considerable portion of the fifth and sixth Padas, A preserves them. It has much less scribal errors and what is more interesting to note is that it records a dhätvādesa of the root drś in causative as dāva attributing the same to Šakalya-dāvas ceti Sākalyaḥ (VII. 106) which none of the Mss. including B does. The only major defect of this Ms. is that it is written in a very abridged manner especially in respect of the commentary portion and the text after the eighth Pada is unfortunately lost. Had it contained the remaining portion of the work it would have been the most useful Ms. It, however, comes under the same group as B.
The remaining four Mss. U, G, I and have a common feature which would show that they belong to the same originals. Yet they have certain differences among themselves which indicate that U and G form one group while I and O another. I and O are undoubtedly copies of the same original. They have very slight differences in readings. As the footnotes will show, they most often tally. All these again lack a considerable portion of the fifth and sixth Padas and the most serious thing is that starting from punar vacanād vrk şādau (XII. 8 ) of the Sakari Vibhāṣā section up to the end of declensional section of Nāgara Apabhramsa
3. For a graphic description of the contents of I, which are more or less identical with those of UGO, 800 Descriptive Catalogue, India Office Library, ed. by A. B. KEITK, Vol. II, Part I, p. 300.
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