Le Commentaire de Harihara sur le Malatimadhava de Bhavabhuti.

• Author: Gerow, Edwin
• Position: Book Review

Edited by FRANCOIS GRIMAL. Publications du Departement d'indologie, vol. 77. Pondichery: INSTITUT FRANCAIS DE PONDICHERY, 1999. Pp. xxxiv + 500.

This meticulous critical edition constitutes the first publication of one of the oldest surviving commentaries on a Sanskrit drama, one which, in the view of Grimal, is also the oldest available on the Malatimadhava, and is itself a source for many later commentaries, notably that of Jagaddhara, often published. Harihara is to be dated to the latter half of the twelfth century, and in all likelihood hailed either from Nepal--so suggested by the colophon on one of the manuscripts utilized--or from Kashmir, in that the text he comments on most closely resembles the Kashmiri versions of the play (pp. vii-viii).

The edition is based on two manuscripts only. Given the paucity of data, it is hard to imagine a more thorough evaluation of the material involved. Not only is every variant--even the nonsensical--noted and emendations exhaustively reported, but several comparative appendices are provided that allow the reader to judge previous editions (notably Bhandarkar's) of Malatimadhava and make improvements thereon, based on Harihara's text. Three indices--of Prakrit words discussed by Harihara, of citations made by him, and of technical terms he employs--make the edition of supreme value also to students of Indian poetics and literary history. And in addition, Grimal provides nearly fifty pages of his own commentary in the form of notes, ranging from cross-references to extended defenses of every doubtful reading. The twenty-seven-page introduction can also serve as an elementary textbook on how to edit a text critically, leaving nothing to the scholarly imagination. Copious and precise statistics are provided on the types of variants found in the two manuscripts and on Grimal's "plus de 4700" judgment calls, including emendations and etiologies of the manuscripts' blunders (pp. xiv-xxiii). Particularly interesting is his discussion of Prakrit citations in the commentary, which bears largely on the question of how...