Carudatta: Ein indisches Schauspiel: Kritische Edition und Ubersetzung mil einer Studie des Prakrits der "Trivandrum-Dramen.".

• Author: Straube, Martin

Carudatta: Ein indisches Schauspiel: Kritische Edition und Ubersetzung mil einer Studie des Prakrits der "Trivandrum-Dramen." BY ANNA AURELIA ESPOSITO. Drama und Theater in Sudasien, vol. 4. Wiesbaden: HARRASSOWITZ VERLAG, 2004. Pp. x + 408. [euro]88.

Much has been written about the so called "Bhasa plays" since their discovery and publication by Taruvai Ganapati Sastri in the years 1912-15. For nearly a century now many scholars have examined these plays in order to shed light not only on questions of authorship and chronology but also on problems related to the plots of the plays and their sources, to linguistics and poetics. Further, some have translated these plays into different languages. However, until very recently, there have been no serious attempts to establish reliable textual bases for all these undertakings. Thus, especially in the case of translations and--still more compellingly so--for linguistic studies such as Wilhelm Printz's Bhasa's Prakrit, 1921, the obvious need for critically edited texts of these plays on the basis of as many MSS as possible does not seem to have been looked upon as necessary. Fortunately, the situation changed in the middle of the 1990s when a group of scholars and students around Prof. Heidrun Bruckner of the University of Wurzburg began to systematically search for, collect, and transcribe all available MSS of the "Trivandrum plays" (as it has become the convention by most scholars to refer to them) in order to prepare reliable editions and translations.

The book under review is the first major outcome of that important project apart from several papers and bare text editions of two short one-act plays, and more publications are under preparation. (1) It contains, as the title says, a critical edition together with a study and a German translation of the Carudatta, one of the most discussed "Trivandrum plays." In addition, the author provides an outline of the various Prakrit dialects not only of the Carudatta itself but also of the other "Trivandrum plays," furthermore supplemented by two welcome indices (both an index verborum and an index locorum) to Wilhelm Printz's Bhasa's Prakrit, until recently the most comprehensive and important work on that subject.

The edition of the text is based on the four known MSS of the Carudatta, all of which are written in Malayalam script on palm leaves. Only one of these could be identified with one of Ganapati Sastri's two sources; the other MS used by him...