LINES FOLLOWED II Very limited in number as they are, our manuscript malerials, except those of Skandasvanun's Commentary, could not have been susceptible to area-wise recensional or versional variation in their respective texts So there was no question of their having to be grouped on that basis In the case of Skandasvamin's Bhasja, however, the portion from I, 1, 1 to 1, 32, 15, comprising the first two Adhyayar of the first Astaka, is found in two forms, to wit, (t) mits Shorler Version and (2) m its Longer Version The Shorter Version presents in a concise form the substance of the Longer Version but it also includes, at times, a few additional explanatory sentences, extracts from the Anukramanika and grammatical notes. As it is available only for the first 32 Suktas whereas the Longer Version besides being available for this portion is alone available also for the entire remaining extant portion of the Bhagya, some later hand seems to have started preparing the former but somehow had to stop for good at the end of the Sakta 32 Therefore, it has been preferred to prepare the present edition on the basis of the materials available for the Longer Version as indicated in the sequel The Shorter Version, however, has also been preserved in proper form by having first been critically edited on the basis of the materials available for it as also indicated in the sequel and, then, recorded, Mantra-wise, in the foot notes 1 Darring the obviously spurious and therefore, useless variant readings, all other readings which were available from the previous editions alongwith the foot nates thereto as well as from the new manuscript materials which were collected for this edition have been duly recorded in the Critical Apparatus IV. In constituting the text our main stress has been on selecting the correct readings even at the cost of having had to prefer to follow for this purpose the lead of a single manuscript and reject all the rest The field having been free, as indicated above, from recensional or varsıonal variation, there could be no question of our producing, in this way, any contaminated edition Moreover, as we have observed else-where (Sec VI, I, I [1963] p 50 ff), eclecti- cism had its own unimpeachable scope even where recensional or versional frontiers were said to be well defined V. Where the manuscript readings happened to be corrupt in grammar and inconsistent with context, we have corrected them on the basis of grammar, context and comparative study of all available internal as well as external evidences and adopted them as such in our constituted text, duly recording, at the same time, the said corrupt manuscript readings alongwith the previous editonal suggestions, if any, in the foot notes. VI Where the available manuscript readings were not suitable to the context but, still, neither the previous editors had been able to suggest any emendations nor were we in a position to make any suggestions in this behalf, such readings have been retained in the text followed by the sign of interrogation, II Almost all the quotations have been traced to and checked with their textual sources and placed inside merted commas, invariably followed by their respective references,
