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INTRODUCTION
73
determine “the” text but also to give some idea of the variation, mislections of this sort have been reported whenever they occurred in exceptionally good MSS, or tended to show possible relationship between MSS, or were frequent enough to show a general tendency to error, or when they made some meaning, however fantastic, or when the original could not be determined unambiguously. It must be admitted that a good many of these serve no immediately useful purpose besides swelling the critical apparatus, but a few were comic enough to relieve the otherwise intolerable tedium of collation, like bhojanam sadgatinän [1000], grāhamayiva [132 ) and na dahati pāvakah which ruins both metre and meaning in 60% though given in an excellent codex, A3. Possibly, some might one day be of interest to psychoanalysts. Mahärāştrian scribes generally confuse length in i, ī, u, ū, besides scattering their anusvāras and visargas as an afterthought, much in the way of seasoning, at random. The Gujarati and south Rājasthāni scribes insert the anusvāra on a syllable preceding a nasal consonant. In the Dravidian codices, the tendency to use la for la is generally intensified while those in the extreme south often reverso the northern bias, replacing sa by sa. These mistakes are passed over without mention, like the common interchange tartha.
Not reported also are permissible variants of samdhi. N MSS except J, and some of the Nandināgari MSS of S generally double the consonant joined to a preceding r: märgga, written like mārgra in Jaina nāgari; varnna, with the duplicated nn shown by crossing diagonally; nirddhana, etc. Even commoner, in all MSS except VSP, is the use of the anusvāra for the parasavarna, which we have corrected here. Finally, some difficulty arises because of our compromise orthography which treats each påda as a unit and separates consonants that come together by saņdhi alone without a proper compund, except the 9'. This means that I have committed myself in some ambiguous cases to a definite opinion as to the existence of a compound, without being really certain as to the poet's intention. The reader is at liberty to choose his own interpretation. Let it be emphasized, also, that there has never been any question of reporting all possible variants from every MS inspected.
4.3. Methods for determining the readings. Some of the variants of types roportod above make little difference to the actual text, even when thoy cannot be eliminated. A single anusvüra, easily added or erased, separates the singular yütyupaduh froin the plural yāntyāpadah in 394 or yati from yänti in 226". Whether 1199 should begin udvrttah stana-in place of rovrttastuna-, or 1520 have yalat-trutyad for galatrutyad, or whether there should be id visarga at the end of 1226 to improve the sense are almost matters of individual taste. Clearly, some general principles are necessary which not only apply here but in cases where the causes of variations much deeper, giving decidedly more serious variants. I do not mean the highly individualistic emendations that occur in rare MSS like Punjab 2985 or Bikanor 3275, which may safely be ignored, but variants to wluch new MSS ada new readings and which must therefore be treated as itrising from some ossential dilliculties.
At the outset, let us provo two general principles of text-criticism, which apply to our material. The first is that rigid Päņinian rules do
10 H. y.
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