necessary, been adopted into the text of the present edition, or have been noticed in the Notes appended.
The seven MSS. are so characterized that they seem to belong to two families. A B C D E are certainly derived origin- ally from one and the same source, as is proved by the fact of their reading a few passages in the same wrong way, e.g. शमिंष्ठाया कृतिः for शर्मिष्ठायाः कृतिः (p. 22, l. 11) उपलभते for उपलभे (p. 10्३, L.5). Of 'course, though originally belonging to the same source, probably D,‡ they have, subsequently to their genesis, been corrected, and therefore vary considerably from each other, as may be seen from the variंx lectiones noticed in our footnotes. MSS. F and G, on the contrary, form a separate family by themselves. This is apparent from both of them reading certain passages in one and the same way. And yet G differs every now and then from F, a fact that seems to owe its origin to the former, or rather the source of it, having been probably corrected subsequently with the help of other MSS., though it bears no marks of correction in its present form.
As, fortunately, all the MSS. collated for the present edition were almost equally good, and as none of them exhibit a different redaction of the text, properly so called, none of them can be said to be the basis of the text herein given to a greater extent than another. All of them have been most minutely and carefully collated, and their differences given in the foot-notes, except such as appeared to me to have arisen from clerical errors.
The Sanskrit version (छाया) of the Prakrit passages, given in the present edition, though based upon the translation found in MSS. D and F had yet to be greatly corrected by the editor, that of the MSS. in question being, as is usually the case, very inaccurate and incorrect.
‡ Thus, e.g., the ते in उपलभेते in D is subsequently scratched, but not sufficiently, and hence the ते was copied into the other MSS.
