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TULSI-PRAJNA
the reading with dála is better, and therefore accepted by Pischel.
The reading tista, is a little confusing as Māgadhi is concerned. Though Hemacandra has accepted st in Māgadhi in place of sth and rth, the real reading of this sütra should be st, as Palatal s is one of the dominant features of Māgadhi Probably both Pischel and Vaidya were carried on by the sūtras of Hemacandra and so, the Prakrit reading tittha is replaced by tista. As the eastern Prakrit grammarians recognised only palatal ś. even in conjunct, this can be rectified in accordance with the prescriptions of eastern Prakrit grammarians. In fact, in the printed text of the Sakuntala. the reading tista or tittha is not found at all, instead in its place abbhandala is found. Should we then say that at the time of Hemacandra the reading tista or tittha, whatever, might be, was prevalent? The passage ted should be fakkāvadāla tista niväść dhivali. in the light of the discussion made above.
Another reading of Māgadbi found in the výtti of Hemacandra's Prakrit grammar under IV. 302 is different from what is printed in the common edition of the Sakuntala. The reading is mäledha vă dhaledha vă / ayam dáva še āgame. Here in this reading of Hemacandra some differences are noticed with the printed editions of the Sakuntala. In most of the editions the reading is māledha vă / kuşfedha vā / ayam se āama vuttamte. This reading also has some variants, e. g. in some of the editions the reading is ettike dāva edassa āgamel adhunā māledha ya kusredha vă etc. However, is some of the editions mäledha ya dhaledha và has a different reading. In place of dhaledha and kustedha they have muñcehha and pittedha, however, the reading dhaledha has not survived in any of the editions printed so far. This pair of expression māledha vă dhaledha vā bas some similarity with modern expressions in Bengali. The reading of Hemacandra as mäledha vā dhaledha yā has a parallel in Bengali mara athava dhara (mār, dhor karā, literary to beat and hold). So this reading has a parallel in Bengali expressions. In a similar way the expression mäledha vā kuşfedha vă has also a parallel in Bengali expression--mära är kofu (cf. again mār kuț karā, literary to beat and to chop). As it is a context of fish which needs cutting by a stake, probably in course of time the reading dhaledha is changed to kuşțedha. It will be perhaps too much to guess that this reading is changed in any one of the eastern manuscripts and from that time onwards, perhaps, the reading kustedha crept into the manuscripts in general. Another reading pittedha has also come into existence almost in the same pretext which goes on a par with the Bengali
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