English
For paper MSS. it was or is done by wrapping the leaves in cloth or paper and tying them up. The cloth has a band sewed to the corner for tying. Both methods are extremely inconvenient, and wasteful of time. The latter invites neglect, and is on that account often an ineffectual one, as any one knows who has handled Indian MSS. and noticed how often occasional leaves are missing, especially at the beginning or end. Even if the leaves do not get lost, they get into disorder very easily. It is impi-acticable to bind palm-leaf MSS.; and extremely troublesome to bind paper MSS., because each single leaf has to be mounted before stitching. Even printed books are hard to bind when printed in folios or in the curious Indian six-paged ternions. Even if bound, the result (save in the case of small books) is inconvenient for the hand, because the ‘ back’ of the books comes at the foot of the versos and head of the rectos; and awkward for the eye, because the first line of the verso is apt to be too distant and the last line of the recto too near. As intimated, an old-time pandit actually prefers his books unbound. He is not given to ‘ looking up references ’. As he sits cross-legged, a single loose leaf is easy to hold; while a heavy bound volume would be most unhandy for him, except as used on a desk or frame; and these, although mentioned, for example, at Harshacharita (Bombay, 1892), p. 95, were probably not usual. A scribe sits on his haunches, with his knees for a table (cf. Mitra’s Report, p. 22). To shelve such unbound MSS. so that they may be conveniently found and consulted is virtually impossible.' Six to twenty MSS. are often tied up in one cloth bundle. The great convenience of having the title lettered on the back of a book and of being able to take a single one from the shelf without further trouble cannot be duly appreciated until one has handled these bundles. The Sanskrit MSS. of the Berlin Library * Cf. Mitra’s remarks on the ‘ Accessibility ’ (or rather, inaccessibility) of such MSS., p. 24. XXll Notes on the Externals of Indian Boohs and of the India Office Library are admirably bound, and no one objects. Were the libraries of European Sanskritists like those of the heads of the Tols of Bengal (Mitra, p. 21), the scientific output might well be meagre. With the now very rapid increase in the production of Sanskrit books printed in India, the adoption of the European (or Kashmirian) form is becoming more and more nearly universal; and with this has come binding and the lettering of the backs. We ought to hail with gladness these departures from the ancient way. 4. Printing.—It was an Englishman, Charles Wilkins, the ‘ Caxton of India who * with his own hands cut the punches and cast the types from which Halhed’s Bengali grammar was printed^ at Hoogly in 1778’. It is only 116 years since the first Sanskrit book was piinted. That was Sir William Jones’s edition of Kalidasa’s Seasons,^ issued in Bengali letters in 1792. Wilkins taught a native blacksmith, Panchanan, to cut punches and cast type, and, most opportunely, at the very time when Carey, the ‘ Wiclif of the East at Serampore, ‘ was in despair for a fount of the sacred Devanagari type' for his Sanskrit grammar.’ Panchanan made the fount, and he and his successors practised the art so skilfully that Serampore remained the principal type-foundry of the East down to 1860. The first Sanskrit book ever printed in Nagari letters was Carey’s Hitopade^a of Serampore, 1803-4. Benares has produced many litho¬ graphed texts. On the ‘ Bombay side the case was similar. The first important press of Western India ® was started by the American Mission in 1816. A young Eurasian of that press, Thomas Graham, cut the first Marathi and Gujarati type. At this press were later employed also two young Hindu lads, one of whom, Javaji Dadaji, learned the art of printing from the Americans, and founded the Nirnaya Sagara Press, now carried on by his son Tukaram Javaji. The other, taught by Graham, is still living, and cuts all the beautiful Nirnaya Sagara type. Printing in India is therefore modem, and essentially un-Indian in its origin; but no sane man would refuse a Sanskrit text because it was printed and insist on having one made by a Hindu scribe. The considera¬ tion of cost alone would utterly condemn such a preference. Meantime, Bombay and Poona and Calcutta are producing admirably printed Sanskrit texts; printed texts are beginning to come from such out-of-the-way places as Nagpore; and from Kumbhakonam, the ‘Oxford of Southern India’, IT ^ Carey, 2nd ed., London, 1887, p. 217. Cf. Life of U. 1 . Colebrooke, p. 227. “ For an account of it, see JAOS. 16, p. ccliii. Dr. Justin E. Abbott of Bombay writes me what follows. By the Editor of this Series xxiii they come in great numbers. Whether we like it or not, printing will ere long have ousted memorizing and copying as a means of handing down texts. In short, the ancient Hindus are no longer ancient; like the rest of the world they too are moving on. 5. Styles and sizes of the characters. —In old times a Tanjore scribe would write in Grantha characters, and a Kashmirian in ^arada. In any large collection of MSS. the variety of alphabets is very considerable, but the diversity due in part to the difference in individual handwriting, and in part to the difference of time, is of course vastly greater. As a source of difficulty, individual idiosyncracies of chirography, whether in Sanskrit or in English, need no comment. As for the difference in time, there lies before me a facsimile of the MS. of an ancient morality entitled Wisdom (Tudor Facsimile Texts, London, 1907). That MS. is only about 450 years old, and is excellent; but it would be quite illegible, except after hours of study, to the average reader of to-day to whom English is vernacular. So greatly has the style of script changed. Now if every Occidental student of Indian antiquity had to have (what no Hindu has) an equal facility in reading his Sanskrit in Nagari of various periods and distiicts, and in Grantha and ^^ada and other alphabets,^ those who pursued the study far would be few indeed. The printing of Sanskrit works in India is on the whole prevailingly in Nagari letters. That is, in a sense, un-Indian, as appears from this paragraph; but it is a very great help to the general student to be rid of these embarrassing diversities. It is common for ancient MSS. to make a distinction in the size of the letters between those used for the text and those used for the comment.^ This is an excellent and genuinely Indian contrivance, and the best and most recent prints do not depart from it. They have even improved upon it, as in the new edition of the Brahma-Sutras printed at the Nirnaya Sagara Press, in which the commented words are distinguished from the comment by the use of types of heavier and blacker face than that of the comment in which they are imbedded. The new Maha-Bhashya from the same press is a brilliant example of the usefulness and convenience of these distinctions. In this text of Furnabhadra the small type is used to distin¬ guish the frame-story from the rest of the text, 6. Distinction of verse fcom prose.— Verse is indeed sometimes separated from prose, even in ancient inscriptions: so by the danda or * To say nothing of reading his Pali (as he must) in Burmese, Cingalese, Kambodian, and Siamese letters. ^ So in the MSS. of the trivalH form, Mitra, p. 20. XXIV Notes on the Externals of Indian Boohs double danda in a Gupta inscription,^ of 475-6 a.d. ; and in metrical inscriptions of the fourth century the verses or half-verses often correspond to the lines.^ But the usual method in a MS. is to write the verses like prose, and all of it continuously. Foley’s Filnf Upanishads (Bonn, 1844), contains the Katha, in mingled prose and verse; but the editor does not seem to have noticed that there were any verses. The difference, as a literary element, is so important that it should certainly be made clear to the eye. In the first drama registered by Gildemeister,® the Mrcchakatika, of Calcutta, 1829, the verses are printed in lines by them¬ selves; and so in the XJrvaii, M^atimadhava, Uttararama, and Ratnavali (Calcutta, 1830-2); and the custom has now become as good as universal with the Hindu editors of plays. It may be called an innovation, and a helpful one. 7. Marginal words and numbers to facilitate reference.—As a rule, the MSS. are practically devoid of conveniences of this kind. Many MSS. have nothing but the number of the folio (not page). Many have, besides the number, an abbreviated form of the title of the work. Some MSS., as of the Maha-Bharata, put the name of a major division (parvan) on the margin. Such words or numbers are rarely a thoroughly practical and convenient help in finding a passage. Even the Hindu felt the lack of such help, and accordingly coloured the chapter colophons or important words with red ink. Since this procedure is not feasible in print, the oblong printed Maha-Bharata of Bombay, 1878, is inconvenient for reference, because it always takes more or less searching to find the chapter-number, unless one writes it (as I have done) with a crayon in the margin. The oblong edition of Bombay, 1889, is vastly more convenient, in that it gives the chapter-number in the margin, besides both the name and number of the parvan. In general, the most recent works of the Nirnaya Sagara Press are so practical and convenient in this regard as to leave nothing to be desired, and even to put some Occidental editors to shame.* Devices used in ibis edition to facilitate reference, and for the convenience of the beginner.—An editor often forgets that the user of his book is not so familiar with it as is the editor.