महावीरचरितम् (महाकवि भवभूति - वीररस-प्रधान रामकथा नाटक सम्पूर्ण ७ अङ्क सटीक)

A Method for citing Sanskrit Dramas [xviii good method should be so good as to commend itself to general acceptance by scholars and future editors, since uniformity is in itself highly desirable. For these reasons I earnestly hope that this system will be widely accepted and followed by scholars of India and the Occident. Importance of a good method of citation.—‘A simple and sufficient means of citation is absolutely indispensable for any text of mingled verse and prose that is of consequence enough to be studied and cited at all. The editor who fails to provide such means is guilty of flagrant neglect of plain duty and of gross disregard for the time and convenience of students and of his colleagues. By way of punishment he may count upon the seriously circumscribed usefulness of his book and the silent maledictions of those who are forced to use it.’—This was my plea, in 1900, before the court of intending editors, on behalf of a good method of citation, and made in the preface of the translator of Konow’s Karpūra-mañjarī, Harvard Oriental Series, vol. 4, p. xvi. The system tried by me in 1900 proved unsatisfactory in one particular, the method of citing the prose-passages. The one now proposed is substantially the same as that of 1900, excepting the feature which concerns the prose-passages. Two aspects of the method : its logical character and its typographical **expression.—**A good method must be good in that it is logical and there- fore easy to understand and to remember, and good also in that the typographical devices for its expression are simple and are easily and quickly caught by the eye. These general requirements are so obvious as to need no argument. Nobody disputes them—chiefly (I fear) because nobody stops to think of them. Hence the need of bringing them to the attention of future editors. The excellences of a good method appeal in part to the mind and in part to the sense of sight, and the means for securing them will accordingly be treated under two heads (which, however, cannot be wholly separated in discussion), namely, The logically essential features of a good method, and (p. xxiv) Typographical devices for making this method usable. **Logically essential features of a good method.—**A good method should utilize the native divisions of the text so far as these are natural or logical or generally accepted.—To illustrate. For the English Bible we have the generally accepted divisions into books and chapters and verses. These are always accordant among the innumerable editions, while the pagination (unless by some strange chance) is always discordant. To cite the English Bible by pages, ignoring those divisions, would be futile folly. And it is no less wrong in principle to ignore the natural divisions of a Sanskrit play. Hence