Page 892 of: Abhijnana Shakuntala (synthetic study)

APPENDIX V
२७९
[279
] strong predilection for grammar, while the readings given by
Monier-Williams seem to be based on an outlook of the his-
torical background answering to the reliability of one or the
other reading of the different manuscripts.
In judging the readings of the texts of the ancient authors,
specially of poets and playwrights, a mechanical adherence to
strictly grammatical forms or to rules of rhetoric, prosody or
dramaturgy, is as deceptive as is the blind allegiance to the
text, in its entirety, of any particular manuscript, howsoever
excellent or useful it might be. Collators of manuscripts best
know how the original readings of ancient classics do undergo
change of complexion, and sometimes beyond recognition,
at the hands of grammarians, rhetoricians, prosodists and lexi-
cographers; how blots or blemishes steal into the manus-
cripts through the negligence or ignorance of the scribes;
how the intrusive hand of the poetasters, deluded by a chimeri-
cal and insolent hope of improving the author, inflicts a
wound here and there, more serious than the mere negligence
or ignorance of the copyists; how archaisms gradually give way to
modern manners of expression at the hands of scholiasts long
habituated to and well conversant with familiar forms and
phraseologies of the modern classics.
Needles indeed it is to expatiate upon the importance of dis-
proving the idea of oversight or ignorance that may be deemed
or apprehended as clustering round the apparently anomalous
readings adopted by Monier-Williams. Oversight, which is
apt to escape even the most vigilant eye, specially in strain and
hurry can hardly be justified by its overwhelming frequency
of occurrence. Equally preposterous it is to throw the present
Prākta anomaly to the account of a bleared vision or an imperfect
understanding of the learned editor, with finished equipment, in
respect of a Sutra of simple and universal nature, prescribing the
1. : (Vararuci 2, 15; Hemacandra 1. 231; Trivikrama 1.
3. 55; Lakṣmīdhara p 14; Siṃharāja 4, 62). It should be
noted here that in one of editions of Kramadiśvara's Prākṛta
grammar in Devanāgri character the Sūtra reveals a labial sonant
(*), with the exexplanatory note and the illustrative example in
the commentary, both following suit. The edition not being of
a highly dependable nature in its reading, the question is one→