पृष्ठम्:बृहद्देवता.djvu/२०

. xxiv] EMENDATIONS [Introduction vi. 9), or of 'S'aunaka and other Ācāryas' (v. 39), or the 'Acaryas S'au- naka, Yaska, Gālava' (vii. 38). My conclusion, therefore, is that the writer was not S'aunaka himself, but a teacher of his school, who was not separated from him by any great length of time. 11. Emendations. The text, as it has been fixed by me, contains about 107 emenda- tions ¹. As might be expected from the corrupt character of its MSS., no fewer than thirty-nine of these corrections had to be made in the passages peculiar to the B recension; while only one (and that a very slight one) occurs in the eighteen ślokas peculiar to A. Over a hundred emendations seem at first sight a formidable number, one to the page on the average. The correction is, however, generally very slight. In the first place, the emendations are, with only three exceptions, concerned with single isolated words, not with whole passages. In the second place, over seventy of the corrections are concerned with a single letter. Twenty- four affect two letters or one syllable, and eight are concerned with three letters or two syllables in a word. About seven of these cases consist of the omission, addition, or transposition of single syllables, chiefly for metrical reasons. There is one case in which three successive words have been corrected (vii. 137), and only one in which the emendation affects the whole pada (viii. 84). One pada has been left blank (vi. 7). Only one of the emendations (vii. 114) can, I think, be said to be palaeographically im- probable; while more than a dozen of them are rendered absolutely certain by external evidence. Wherever even a single letter has been added, omitted, or altered, without the authority of any of the MSS. of the Brhaddevata itself, I have inserted an asterisk in the text; and the reasons for the emendations are always discussed in the critical notes. Where I have only corrected faulty spelling, as tattva for tatva, sattra for satra, buddhva for budhvã, I have not added an asterisk; but in cases like krttam for krtam (iii. 23) I have done so. The asterisk has as far as possible been placed above the emended syllable. When I had first finished constituting the text, the number of passages in which I was doubtful as to the reading or the sense, was considerable. Continued study 1 More than one-fourth (28) of these are found in the fifth Adhyaya; only three altogether in the first; and eight each in the second, third, and fourth. Thus three-quarters of the emendations occur in the second half of the text. 2 Only one line (i. 119cd) has been trans- posed against all the MSS.; while the position occupied by another line (viii. 108ab) and of two ślokas (viii. 84, 85) has the support of one MS. only (m¹). I have in a few cases transposed or emended the figures which number the vargas. In the former case the asterisk is to the left, in the latter at the top.