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FIXING UP OF SOME VARIANTS FROM KĀLIDĀSA
Tapasvi Nandi
The object of this small paper is to draw attention of all learned scholars towards a very important missing link in the field of text-critiof the works of Kálidāsa.
In our humble opinion the efforts in the direction of Kālidāsa-textCriticism seem to be incomplete and even the so called critical editions of Kalidasa's works such as those by the Sahitya Akademi, New Delbi are sadly wantiog in certain respects.
The point is that a careful editor of a given work should utilize and weigh all the available research tools, and every ms. should be handled as something sacred. This has not happened in the task of editing the works of Kālidāsa. We know that in their works, alamkārikas diaw upon freely from Kālidāca to illustrate this point or that. From Vārana, down to Visvanātha onwards they seek inspiration from Kálidāra. There alamkāra works had ary number of brilliant commentaries and the Vagdevatāvatāra Mammata is said to have claimed a commentary from every house-gļhe-gļhe. We have seen that these commentators are in the habit of discussing a particular variant with a terse remark such as "ayam sādhupāfhaḥ, ayam apapathaḥ', etc. The works of Kālidāsa have also been commented upon by many beyond Mallinātha. We have in our mss. library at the L. D. Institute of Indology, quite a number of interesting commen. taries on Raghuvamsa, Meghadūta, and Kumara-sambhava, 1 by Jaina and non-Jaioa writers of high calibre. All these are worked out only with any number of variants, but even the numbering of verses, their sequence and total, also vary. And all these evidences cannot be dismissed lightly. They have to be taken note of and weighed properly, no matter what date they belong to, for surely each one represents a tradition much older, of its owo. These traditions were preserved probably in very old mss. that are lost to us now. And works on alamkāra proper, dating back from 8th Cen. A. D., cannot by dismissed lightly. Thus Vānana, Anandavardhana, Bhoja, Mammata and Hemacandra to me, are greater authorities then any of the present day editors, no matter their high reputation and position We know how ācārya Hemacandra's Kavyaousasana with its priceless
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