2023-02-16 14:47:06 by ambuda-bot
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EDITOR'S PREFACE
5
this, from the translation made by Abraham Roger at Palghat with the help
of a Brahmin Padmanabha, and published about forty years later in a French
translation by Thomas de la Grue under the title La porte ouverte pour parven-
ir á la connaissance du paganisme caché [Amsterdam, 1670]. Though Carey's
College still functions at Chandernagore, not a single copy of his edition seems
to be available in any known Indian collection. One possible reason for this
may be the fact that the press was struck by lightning in 1812, being destroyed
with its store of books, I had to read this work from a microfilm of the IO
copy, which shows the N to be Northern, while the S and V are from W codic-
es, the latter being supplemented to make an approximate hundred. The
preface shows that the edition was prepared from three different MSS, and
that it was meant quite frankly to be a school text for the college at Fort
William.
The next, decidedly more pretentious, edition was by P. von Bohlen,
"Bhartriharis Sententiae/et/ Carmon quod Chauri nomine circumfertur erotic-
um/ad codicem MSTT fidem edidit Latine vertit et commentario instruxit
Petrus À Bohlen" [Berlin, Ferdinand Duemmler, 1833]. Bohlen follows
Carey for the rigāra (missing in the Amsterdam translation of 1670) and takes
Roger as a guide in constituting the Niti, probably because of the similar
paddhati division. His work could have passed without much notice but for
the large stones he cast at Indian pandits who, in Carey's edition, "...metra
protentosis lectionibus violarunt; glossemata in textum, genuina lectione
noglecta, receperunt; versuum ordinem turbarunt; scholia in librum Vairagyam
vitiis plena imprimenda curarunt textum donique typis expressum a sphalmatis
typographicis non ubique purgarunt."
This deserves some comment, if only because of the long tradition
set up by a certain type of European scholar who generously gave the
credit for his mistakes to the Indian pandits who had done the actual work.
Let it be admitted at the start that, even today, the best of presses in India
leave a good deal to be desired, while the worst are probably the worst in the
world. Still, if Bohlen imagined that his own edition was free from these de-
fects, it could only be because of an unparallelled smugness and complacency.
The Indian pandit would have, at the very least, known that there were difficul-
ties of syntax in such readings as hotāramapi juhvantam [p. 44, N 47º], -guņāḥ
samsargo jayate [p 46, N 51]; and that kodravānām [p. 52-3, N 98°] or
tyāktvä [p. 54 V 4"] leave something to be desired on the part of the editor.
What puzzles me is the splendid phrase "genuina lectione neglecta" and "versuum
ordinem turbarunt". How did Bohlen know the true reading or the correot
order from Carey's edition, a couple of scrappy W MSS, and our F supplement-
ed by conceited ignorance of Sanskrit (for which criticism sits ill upon mel),
when I find the text in some doubt and the order quite uncertain after consult-
ing several hundred codices? That the W commentary differs systematically
from the W text did not strike him at all, so that the pandits he belaboured
were in reality more faithful to the manuscripts than Bohlen himself.
Finally,
his procedure would have led to a very crude approximation to the S prototype
for the N and V, had he been able to identify some of Roger's originals; for
example, kim kurmasya is confused with jätaḥ karmaḥ. His synoptic chart is
5
this, from the translation made by Abraham Roger at Palghat with the help
of a Brahmin Padmanabha, and published about forty years later in a French
translation by Thomas de la Grue under the title La porte ouverte pour parven-
ir á la connaissance du paganisme caché [Amsterdam, 1670]. Though Carey's
College still functions at Chandernagore, not a single copy of his edition seems
to be available in any known Indian collection. One possible reason for this
may be the fact that the press was struck by lightning in 1812, being destroyed
with its store of books, I had to read this work from a microfilm of the IO
copy, which shows the N to be Northern, while the S and V are from W codic-
es, the latter being supplemented to make an approximate hundred. The
preface shows that the edition was prepared from three different MSS, and
that it was meant quite frankly to be a school text for the college at Fort
William.
The next, decidedly more pretentious, edition was by P. von Bohlen,
"Bhartriharis Sententiae/et/ Carmon quod Chauri nomine circumfertur erotic-
um/ad codicem MSTT fidem edidit Latine vertit et commentario instruxit
Petrus À Bohlen" [Berlin, Ferdinand Duemmler, 1833]. Bohlen follows
Carey for the rigāra (missing in the Amsterdam translation of 1670) and takes
Roger as a guide in constituting the Niti, probably because of the similar
paddhati division. His work could have passed without much notice but for
the large stones he cast at Indian pandits who, in Carey's edition, "...metra
protentosis lectionibus violarunt; glossemata in textum, genuina lectione
noglecta, receperunt; versuum ordinem turbarunt; scholia in librum Vairagyam
vitiis plena imprimenda curarunt textum donique typis expressum a sphalmatis
typographicis non ubique purgarunt."
This deserves some comment, if only because of the long tradition
set up by a certain type of European scholar who generously gave the
credit for his mistakes to the Indian pandits who had done the actual work.
Let it be admitted at the start that, even today, the best of presses in India
leave a good deal to be desired, while the worst are probably the worst in the
world. Still, if Bohlen imagined that his own edition was free from these de-
fects, it could only be because of an unparallelled smugness and complacency.
The Indian pandit would have, at the very least, known that there were difficul-
ties of syntax in such readings as hotāramapi juhvantam [p. 44, N 47º], -guņāḥ
samsargo jayate [p 46, N 51]; and that kodravānām [p. 52-3, N 98°] or
tyāktvä [p. 54 V 4"] leave something to be desired on the part of the editor.
What puzzles me is the splendid phrase "genuina lectione neglecta" and "versuum
ordinem turbarunt". How did Bohlen know the true reading or the correot
order from Carey's edition, a couple of scrappy W MSS, and our F supplement-
ed by conceited ignorance of Sanskrit (for which criticism sits ill upon mel),
when I find the text in some doubt and the order quite uncertain after consult-
ing several hundred codices? That the W commentary differs systematically
from the W text did not strike him at all, so that the pandits he belaboured
were in reality more faithful to the manuscripts than Bohlen himself.
Finally,
his procedure would have led to a very crude approximation to the S prototype
for the N and V, had he been able to identify some of Roger's originals; for
example, kim kurmasya is confused with jätaḥ karmaḥ. His synoptic chart is