पृष्ठम्:Mudrarakshasa.pdf/८

7

CRITICAL NOTICE

Râo Bahâdur Gajânan Krishna Bhâțavađekar, now in the service of the Baroda State. The MS. is by no means accurately, though it is most clearly and legibly, written. There are sundry mistakes to be met with from time to time, but they are nearly always easy of correction. · The MS., for instance, often writes इ for यि. The Sanskrit equivalent of the Prâkŗit passages is given in considerable portions of the play, but not throughout, and it follows the Prâkŗit passages themselves in the middle of the text. In the latter portion of the play, viz. from the fifth Act onwards, the Prâkŗŗit mostly remains without the Sanskrit translation. The original from which the copy was made, in all probability, contained both the text and commentary, as before the final stanza, and after the words तथापि इदमस्तु, we read इत्थमत्रातिगम्भीरशुभोदर्कचाणक्यनयसंविधानेन चन्द्रगुप्तसाचिव्यपदलाभपरितुष्टो सहामात्यो राक्षस इत्याशास्ते ॥ भरतवाक्यम्॥ and then follows वाराहीम् and so forth, as in our text. The words set out here are not to be found in our copies of the commentary. They may, perhaps, belong, and probably do belong, to some other commentator than Dhuņdhirâja; but they are plainly no part of Vis'âkhadatta's text, and they must very likely have got into the text in the copy now under description from the copy from which it was prepared. The MS. bears no date, but is comparatively very modern-looking, probably not even so much as fifty years old. It states at the end the ग्रन्थसंख्या as 1350, which is, no doubt, a note of the copyist made for calculating his own remuneration. (See further, p. 11 infra.). The next copy to be mentioned is a MS. written on palmyra leaves which is denoted by the letter M. It was a MS. procured for me by my friend, Mr. V. N. Narasimiengar of Bangalore, who has always been most useful both to Professor Bhâņđârkar and myself, in procuring for us copies of Sanskrit texts from Southern India. This MS. and the next are both written in the Telugu characters, which I am unable to read, and I had therefore to resort to the services of readers to help me in the matter. The MS. appears to be, on the whole, very correctly written. It contains no double letters, apparently such letters being denoted by the corresponding single letters with a dot over the previous letter in many cases. (Cf. Burnell's Indian Palæography, p. 13; Pandit's Mâlavikâgnimitra, pp., IX., X.). The confusion of थ and ध seems-