नाट्यशास्त्रम् (प्रथम भाग - अभिनवभारती एवं हिन्दी टीका सहित)

XXXIX

interested in the subject.. Incomplete though it was, it nevertheless contained a good portion of the rules regarding the presentation of plays on the stage, and included valuable data on the origin and nature of the ancient Indian drama, but no one seems to have subjected it to the searching study it deserved. Whoever wrote on Hindu plays after Lévi depended more on his work than on the Nāṭyaśāstra itself, even when this was available (at least in a substantial part) in a critical edition. It may very legitimately be assumed that the reasons which conspired to render the Nāṭyaśāstra rather unattractive included among other things, the difficulty of this text which was not yet illuminated by a commentary.

Discovery in the early years of the present century of a major portion of a commentary of the Nāṭyaśāstra by the Kashmirian Abhinavagupta¹⁷ seemed to give, however, a new impetus to the study of the work. And it appeared for the time being that the Nāṭyaśāstra would yield more secrets treasured in the body of its difficult text. But the first volume of the Baroda edition of the work (ch. I-VII)¹⁸ including Abhinava's commentary, disillusioned the expectant scholars. Apart from the question of the merit of this commentary and its relation to the available versions of the Nāṭyaśāstra, it suffered from a very faulty transmission of the text. Not only did it contain numerous lacunae, but quite a number of its passages were not liable to any definite interpretation due to their obviously vitiated nature. Of this latter condition the learned editor of the commentary says, 'the originals are so incorrect that a scholar friend of mine is probably justified in saying that even if Abhinavagupta descended from the Heaven and seen the Mss. he would not easily restore his original reading. It is in fact an impenetrable jungle through which a rough path now has been traced'. The textual condition of Abhinava's commentary on chapters VIII-XVIII (VIII-XX of our text) published in 1934¹⁹ was not appreciably better.

But whatever may be the real value of the commentary, the two volumes of the Nāṭyaśāstra published from Baroda, which were avowedly to give the text supposed to have been taken by Abhinava as the basis of his work, presented also considerable new and valuable materials in the shape of variant readings collated from numerous Mss. of the text as well as from the commentary. These sometimes throw new light on the contents of Nāṭyaśāstra. A study of these together with a new and more or

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¹⁷ Dr. S. K. De seems to be the first in announcing the existence of a more or less complete Ms. of Abhinava's commentary, and in recommending its publication. See Skt, Poetics, Vol I. pp. 120-121.

¹⁸ Natyasastra with the commentary of Abhinavagupta. Edited with a preface, Appendix and Index by Ramakrishna Kavi. Vol 1, Baroda 1926.

¹⁹ Natyasastra with the commentary of Abhinavagupta. Edited with an Introduction and Index by M. Ramakrishna Kavi. Vol. II, Baroda, 1934.