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on similar topics, the absence of a connecting link from one stanza to the
next makes it impossible to prove by any sort of inner criticism that the
lines upon which doubt has been cast by the MS evidence are actually
later additions; Sukthankar, whose unit was a whole passage, could
invariably manage this when stripping off some striking and generally
accepted episode from the Vulgate text of the Mahabharata. The desperate
efforts made by our scribes to include every stanza they believed to be
Bhartrhari's forces us to attach far more weight here to omission than to
inclusion, but there is ample evidence for an earlier long period of complete
neglect in which omissions must presumably have occurred. In the
Pancatantra, Hertel's long series of studies had established versions
which F. Edgerton (A. O. Series, vols. 2, 3; 1924) later combined to form a
consolidated text, though we need not stop to discuss whether the critical
method is identical with Sukthankar's. For me, there was no available
determination of Bhartyhari versions, perhaps because a false appearance of
uniformity had been thrust upon editions in widely separated parts of
the country by the accident of their having been based on what I call
version W. Bhartyhari's popularity is of a different sort than that of
the Mahäbhärata, as it lacks the religious appeal and replaces the
interminable doggerel of the epic by crisp, polished stanzas in far more
elegant metres which necessarily imply a more culturel if restricted
audience. On the other hand, the entire collection of three Couturies is
short enough to be memorized in toto, while its use as a school text has
generally fixed many of the verses in the memory of any Indian who makes
the least preteuce to classical knowledge. This adds to the editor's worries,
in that many stanzas have undoubtedly been contaminated by such
mnemonic transmission, and many have been attracted by similitude to
others which were probably original. Further, the poetry shows a
formative influence on classical Sanskrit, in that our lexicographers
generally quota a line of Bhartyhari to illustrate the meaning of a word
or a phrase, though an examination of the MS apparatus leads to the
suspicion that a solecism or at least a neologism may originally have existed
at the point in question. In spite of the smoothing effect of this type of
popularity, solecisms do occur in any given version of Bhartyhari which the
remarkable flexibility of the Sanskrit language and assiduity of our
commentators cannot remove. Worst of all are the ghost readings that
appear because of the copyist or reader (pathuka) having learned from
another version, I can affirm from my own experience in collation that even
the most carefully trained worker finds his tongue or his pen slip into the
reading first learned in his student days, so that far more careful checking
is necessary for Bhartyhari collations than for a work not generally
EDITOR'S PREFACE
D. D. Kosambi: Some Extant Versions of Bhartrlari's satakas: J.B.B.
R.A.S., vol. 21, 1945, pp. 17-32. I hope to publish all major versions
and their commentaries in due course. My abbreviations N, S, V
denote the niti, srigāra, and vairāgya sataka respectively.
on similar topics, the absence of a connecting link from one stanza to the
next makes it impossible to prove by any sort of inner criticism that the
lines upon which doubt has been cast by the MS evidence are actually
later additions; Sukthankar, whose unit was a whole passage, could
invariably manage this when stripping off some striking and generally
accepted episode from the Vulgate text of the Mahabharata. The desperate
efforts made by our scribes to include every stanza they believed to be
Bhartrhari's forces us to attach far more weight here to omission than to
inclusion, but there is ample evidence for an earlier long period of complete
neglect in which omissions must presumably have occurred. In the
Pancatantra, Hertel's long series of studies had established versions
which F. Edgerton (A. O. Series, vols. 2, 3; 1924) later combined to form a
consolidated text, though we need not stop to discuss whether the critical
method is identical with Sukthankar's. For me, there was no available
determination of Bhartyhari versions, perhaps because a false appearance of
uniformity had been thrust upon editions in widely separated parts of
the country by the accident of their having been based on what I call
version W. Bhartyhari's popularity is of a different sort than that of
the Mahäbhärata, as it lacks the religious appeal and replaces the
interminable doggerel of the epic by crisp, polished stanzas in far more
elegant metres which necessarily imply a more culturel if restricted
audience. On the other hand, the entire collection of three Couturies is
short enough to be memorized in toto, while its use as a school text has
generally fixed many of the verses in the memory of any Indian who makes
the least preteuce to classical knowledge. This adds to the editor's worries,
in that many stanzas have undoubtedly been contaminated by such
mnemonic transmission, and many have been attracted by similitude to
others which were probably original. Further, the poetry shows a
formative influence on classical Sanskrit, in that our lexicographers
generally quota a line of Bhartyhari to illustrate the meaning of a word
or a phrase, though an examination of the MS apparatus leads to the
suspicion that a solecism or at least a neologism may originally have existed
at the point in question. In spite of the smoothing effect of this type of
popularity, solecisms do occur in any given version of Bhartyhari which the
remarkable flexibility of the Sanskrit language and assiduity of our
commentators cannot remove. Worst of all are the ghost readings that
appear because of the copyist or reader (pathuka) having learned from
another version, I can affirm from my own experience in collation that even
the most carefully trained worker finds his tongue or his pen slip into the
reading first learned in his student days, so that far more careful checking
is necessary for Bhartyhari collations than for a work not generally
EDITOR'S PREFACE
D. D. Kosambi: Some Extant Versions of Bhartrlari's satakas: J.B.B.
R.A.S., vol. 21, 1945, pp. 17-32. I hope to publish all major versions
and their commentaries in due course. My abbreviations N, S, V
denote the niti, srigāra, and vairāgya sataka respectively.