नाट्यशास्त्रम् (प्रथम भाग - अभिनवभारती एवं हिन्दी टीका सहित)

LXXIII

Nāṭyaśāstra) has been subjected to considerable rehandling in later times before it assumed the present shape........"

The alleged indications may be summed up as follows :

(i) The colophon at the the end of the KM. text of the Nāṭyaśāstra. (ii) The mention of Kohala as the future writer on certain topics in the Nāṭyaśāstra (XXXVI. 63). (iii) Bhavabhūti's reference to Bharata Muni, the socalled author of the Śāstra, as the Tauryatrika-sūtrakāra. (iv) The mention of the sūtra, the bhāṣya and the kārikā as its constituent parts in the Nāṭyaśāstra itself along with the the existence of prose passages in it. As for the first alleged indication Dr. S. K. De has tried to connect the colophon of the Nāṭyaśāstra (samāptaś cāyam Nandi-Bharata-saṃgīta-pustakam with the chapter on music only.¹⁰ He opines that the Nandi-Bharata of the colophon indicates that the chapters on music (XXVIII-XXXIII) are Bharata's original teaching on the subject as modified by the doctrine of Nandi. If we could accept the view it would have been easy to believe in the composite authorship of the Nāṭyaśāstra. But this does not seem to be possible for the following considerations :

(a) The colophon in question stands at the end of two Mss. copied from the same original and are missing in all the rest of the available Mss.

(b) The word saṃgīta occurring rarely in the Nāṭyaśāstra includes according to Śārṅgadeva (c. 1300 A.C.) gīta (song), vādya (instrumental music) and nṛtya or nṛtta (dance). Hence the colophon may be taken in relation to the entire text and not with the chapters on music alone.

(c) Nandi as a writer or authority on saṃgīta alone has not been mentioned anywheres else.

As for the prediction that Kohala will treat certain topics not discussed in the Nāṭyaśāstra, it may be said that there is nothing in it to show that Kohala is later than the author of this treatise. He was in all likelihood a predecessor or a contemporary of his.

The most important of all the alleged indications of the plural authorship of the Nāṭyaśāstra is the third one. The idea that the work was originally written in prose and was subsequently turned into verse, arose probably from a misunderstanding of the word sūtra. In spite of its traditional definition as alpākṣaram asandigdhaṃ sārvad viśvatomukham etc. there is nothing in it to show that the sūtra must always be in prose. Indeed the Nāṭyadarpaṇa-sūtra is entirely in verse, and the Saddharma-puṇḍarīka-sūtra of the Mahāyāna Buddhists is partly in verse and partly in prose. In the Maṅgalācaraṇa Ślokas of his commentary Abhinava too mentions the extant Nāṭyaśāstra as the Bharatasūtra. Thus on taking the sūtra in its oldest sense, the theory of the supposed original prose version of the Nāṭyaśāstra falls to the ground. The existence of the prose passages in the Nāṭyaśāstra does not in the least help this theory, and

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¹⁰ Skt. Poetics, Vol 1. p. 24. , ¹¹ Ed. GOS. Baroda, 1929.
J