CRITICAL NOTICE
( FIRST EDITION. )
THE present edition of the Mudrakshasa is based upon nine different copies, eight of which are manuscript copies and one printed. These seem to fall roughly into two groups, the one containing those denoted by the letters A, P., M. R., and K., and the other those denoted by the letters' B., E, N., G. The text yielded by the former group is that which has been generally followed in this edition, and that is the text which appears to have been the one received as the best by the commentator Dhuņdhīrâja, Dhundhirâja, however, himself notices various readings in some places (vide e. g., pp. 67-68), and as his commentary was written early in the beginning of the last century, his authority is, of course, by no means conclusive on such questions. The text followed in this edition, therefore, has not been accepted primarily on his authority, but as being the text which was worthy of acceptance upon other grounds also. It will be noticed, from the account of the various MSS. which is given in the sequel that that text is based upon MSS, one of which comes from Banâres, another from Poona, another from Kolhâpur and the remaining two from Southern India. These South Indian MSS., ib may be remarked in passing, always deserve looking into, and often yield very good readings.
It is necessary, however, in this place to draw attention to one circumstance which touches all the MSS. which have been used, for this edition. None of them agrees completely with the SarasvatīkanthâÌbhana, and the Das'arûpa, in the passages which those two works quote from the Mudrârâkshasa. Thus comparing the quotation in the Das'arupaûpa, at p. 120, with the same passage as read by our MSS., (see p. 36 below ), we find very considerable divergences between the former and every one of the copies we have used. It is not necessary to set them out here in full, but the reader can easily make the comparison for himself. The Das'arûpa contains only one actual quotation from the Mudrârâ-
