ascribed to Dāmodara Miśra, dates from the eleventh century, but has been thought, because of its patchwork character, to be merely a revised form of an older work.[1] This supposition is confirmed by the quotations in Dhanika’s commentary, which must be from an earlier Hanuman-nāṭaka than the known recensions, since it is hardly probable that all of the five stanzas, occurring at as many different places, are later interpolations. As has previously been pointed out, the four lines quoted at DR. 1. 129 from Kṣemendra’s Bṛhatkathāmañjarī (a work about half a century later than DR.) are doubtless to be regarded as an interpolation.[2]
3. Concerning Previous Editions of the Daśarūpa
Hall’s edition. The earliest edition of the Daśarūpa (so far as I am aware), and the only one of any independent value, is that of Fitzedward Hall,[3] published at Calcutta in 1865 in the Bibliotheca Indica. The text, as well as the commentary of Dhanika, which accompanies it, was based on a collation of six manuscripts, five of them complete (see Hall, pp. 35–36), and is in general very satisfactory. Unfortunately the editor thought it unnecessary to include in the printed volume the ‘minute account’ of the manuscripts and of their readings which he had taken the pains to prepare (Hall, p. 37), and we are thus left without much of the information that would have been helpful in estimating the correctness of his text. A number of variant readings are recorded, however, on pages 38 and 39, and an introductory paragraph on page 38 gives the impression that many
- ↑ Cf. Schroeder, Indiens Literatur und Cultur, Leipzig, 1887, p. 658; Lévi, pp. 243–244; Cimmino, L’uso delle didascalie [for full title see p. xiii], pp. 142–143.
- ↑ See page xxxiii, above.
- ↑ I am informed, on the authority of Mr. Richard Hall, the scholar’s son, that Hall wrote his given name ‘Fitzedward;’ the title-page of his Daśa-Rūpa, however, has the form ‘Fitz-edward.’ At all events, he should not be referred to as ‘F. E. Hall.’
