Madhuvidya

Author(s): S D Laddu, T N Dharmadhikari, Madhvi Kolhatkar, Pratibha Pingle
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 438

250
Annals BORI, LXV (1984)
a stanza (2.16.26) which contains the king's reply. It was therefore allowed to stand without modification in spite of the resulting incongruity.
That the ur-text contained an account of the king's abdication as we find it in the Southern recension, but later dropped from the Northern one, is shown by the fact that in the constituted text we have further a stanza in which the sage asks the king to return' (to his kingdom) besides telling him to go'.23 This nivartana must have a reference to the sage's asking the king to retrace his step of abdication and not just to his going back to the city from where he had come out to meet the sage.
(2) Or else, we have to suppose that the abdication account was absent in the ur-text and that it was added later in the Southern recension alone with stanza 26 which makes a reference to it. Subsequently only this stanza in its present form got into the Northern recension due to contamination, but not the account of the abdication itself.
It will be seen that in both the above examples of internal incongruity the explanation based on later addition', is cumbrous and that in both cases we can give some ground to support the omission theory. Hence we have to choose the explanation based on later omissions.
It is true that, generally speaking, when we are confronted with passages that are not found in all the recensions it is safe to assume that here we stand face to face with passages added later in the versions which have them, and not with the passages which are omitted later from the versions which do not have them. Dr. V. S. Sukthankar observes: There is then the question of the "additional" passages, that is, passages found in only one of the rival recensions. There is only one rational way of dealing with these additional passages: they must be carefully segregated from the rest of the text, and examined individually. The onus of proving the originality of these "additional" passages will naturally rest on him who alleges the originality: the documents speak naturally against them, but their evidence is not by any means conclusive "24 (ital. mine).
In the case of the two internal incongruities noticed above it has been stated why we have to go against the normal practice and presume that the additional passages are the "original" ones, that is, we have to speak in favour of their later omissions, and not additions. It is at least possible to speak about the omission of certain stanzas in some versions, but it is obvious that we cannot speak of the addition of some stanzas in all the versions. For, that amounts to admitting that they were there in the original text itself.
23 gaccha rajan kṛtārtho' si nivarta manujādhipa 2. 16. 39.
24 ABORI XVI. 91 (1934-35).
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