पृष्ठम्:बृहद्देवता.djvu/१२

xvi] THE MSS. OF THE B GROUP [Introduction It is well It begins: Berlin (Chambers 197); consisting of ninety-six leaves. preserved and clearly written, but is very incorrect. Friganesaya namaḥ. mantradrgbhyo namaskrtva, &c.; and ends: vimsati jyotir uttamam vimsati jyotir uttamam iti 11 28 11 yäskaya namaḥ om yāskaya namaḥ iti brhaddevatāyām aṣṭamo 'dhyāyaḥ samāptaḥ 11 iti brhaddevatā samāp- taḥ samvat 1711 (= A.D. 1654) varse vaisāsasuklasasthyam budhe likhitam idam 1¹ It occupies a somewhat independent position among the B MSS., showing some affinity with A². 2. f. A MS. in the Bodleian Library 2, presented by the late Dr. FitzEdward Hall. It is not dated, but has the appearance of being from 250 to 300 years old. It is written in a somewhat illegible hand, and is very incorrect. It is, nevertheless, in some cases, the only MS. which preserves the right reading. It is the original from which, probably, all the following three MSS. were copied. 3. c. A copy of FitzEdward Hall's Bodleian MS. (f) made at Calcutta in 1862 and presented to the Cambridge University Library by the late Prof. Cowell in 1875. I examined this MS. at Cambridge, but as it is admittedly a copy of f, I have given no collations from it. 4. k. This is a modern copy, which belonged to the late Adalbert Kuhn, now the property of Prof. E. Kuhn of Munich, and lent to me by him through Prof. Lanman for the purposes of this edition. On the fly-leaf is written A. Kuhn, 1865.' It is dated samvat 1921 (= A.D. 1864). Written in Devanagarī on bluish paper, it consists of fifty leaves, with eighteen lines to the page, which, as in European books, is longer than it is broad. This MS. is very inaccurate, agreeing closely in errors and omissions with f. It contains many additional mistakes owing to the somewhat illegible writing of the latter MS. My critical notes prove, I think conclusively, that it is a copy of f. It must have been written before that MS. left India. 5. r². A MS. of Mitra's (=kha), which his critical notes show to agree so closely with f, that I have little doubt it is another copy made from FitzEdward Hall's MS. before it left India. 6, 7. r5, r7. These two MSS. of Mitra's, designated by him as a and pustakantaram respectively, agree very closely. They occupy a some- what independent position in the B group, as they alone occasionally preserve the correct reading (e. g. carunām in iv. 29). In a few cases they also have additional ślokas not found in any of the other MSS. A correspondent, writing from Calcutta in 1898, informed me that one ¹ Described more fully in Weber's Catalogue of Sanskrit MSS., Berlin, 1853, p. 10, No. 47. Described more fully in Winternitz and Keith's forthcoming Catalogue of the Ad- ditional Sanskrit MSS. in the Bodleian Library, p. 21.