कान्हड़दे प्रबन्ध (कवि पद्मनाभ - जालोर चौहान वीरगाथा, अलाउद्दीन खिलजी से युद्ध व जौहर इतिहास)

30 KĀNHADADE PRABANDHA Ms B too is old and reliable and has been fully utilized in the constitution of the text. Mss E F though fragments and, therefore, undated, appear from their general condition, script, language etc to be equally old and reliable. They have been very useful indeed in the collation. Of the remaining manuscripts D has been more useful than the rest as it is more faithful to the original, if less erudite than C and J, which frequently resort to emendations and restorations, and are, therefore, to that extent untrustworthy. G (H) is pretty old, but is rather corrupt. L is quite distinct from the rest, being conspicuous by the peculiarly Rājasthānī character of its script and language. It has been helpful in tracing and restoring the Rājasthānī elements in the language of the Prabandha. VI The following principles have been adopted in the present edition for constituting the text. Instead of reproducing the text of the oldest manuscript according to the date of its copying, and giving the variants from the other manuscripts in the footnotes, or basing the text on the evidence of the majority of manuscripts, I have, as shown above, determined the geneology of the manuscripts and constituted the text by the selection of readings which were more representative than the rest. To take a concrete instance, a reading found in AKB or ABE will be more representative and therefore more likely to belong to the archetype than that found in CDJF alone, as the latter, though larger in number, represent but one family. In the selection of readings due weightage is also given to older and more reliable manuscripts like AKB or EF. Having settled the reading for adoption in the text, all the remaining variants are recorded in the footnote. I have thought it necessary to give the full critical apparatus for two reasons. It was, firstly, necessary to preserve the entire ms evidence, where the manu- scripts were so rare and linguistically so important. Secondly, when a series of dated mss are available, separated from one another by a quarter or half a century each, the variants noted from them would enable the reader to see, at a glance, the phonological development of a word. In constituting the text I have always kept before me the linguistic norm found in works composed circa v. s. 1500 and copied about that time, and have endeavoured to constitute the text in such a way as to make it approximate to that norm.