Vakrokti Jivita Of Kuntaka

Author(s): K Krishnamoorthy
Publisher: K Krishnamoorthy

Page 6

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In the résumé portion, K mostly abandons his policy of relegating De's
readings to the footnotes. From now on he refers to De only rarely (e.g. pp. 245-6). On p. 147, corresponding to De's p. 160, he informs us that ms. B ends with the expression yas tasmad, although he has nowhere clarified what ms. B is. That the reference is to the earlier known Jaisalmer manuscript or De's transcript thereof is something left for us to find out. Then suddenly on p. 154, references to ms."J (- Jaisalmer New Palm-leaf fragments)" begin to appear. Why K did not refer to this source in the preceding portion although it contains a significant
part of that portion remains a mystery. What the source of words included in
remains parentheses between p. 147 and p. 154 is also a mystery. References to KLV, which
the reader is expected to guess as standing for the Kalpa-lata-viveka (ed. Murari
Lal Nagar and Harishankar Shastry Ahmedabad: L.D. Institute of Indology, 1968,
with an English introduction by P.R. Vora, L.D. Series 17) also begin to appear,
.
giving the impression that the KLV does not quote anything from the first 150
pages of the VJ, which, of course, cannot be the case. K also seems to have
implicitly assumed that there are no problematic readings in the first 150 pages
which could be elucidated or improved upon by comparison with VJ passages quoted
in later works. This too is not the case. Furthermore, it is obvious that the
readings identified by K as found in ms. J cannot be the entirety of readings
peculiar to J. K's use of parentheses is also perplexing. We find everything
from single syllables to whole passages given in parentheses after p. 147. V
Yet there is no explanation of what the parentheses indicate, especially where they flank entire passages. 13 K (p. XII) says that he has used brackets (by this term, I suppose he means "()" or "[ ]") to indicate the "minimal verbal changes" he has introduced to emend "very few misreadings of a serious nature." However,
on pages such as 155 and 161-62, there are several lines that appear in rectangular
parentheses.
One cannot view them as minimal verbal changes. Nor do they seem