Index des mots de l'oeuvre de Bhavabhuti.

Index des mots de l'oeuvre de Bhavabhuti. By Francois Grimal. Collection Indologie, no. 92. Pondicherry: INSTITUT FRANCAIS DE PONDICHERY, 2005 Pp. viii + 435.

This large-format work delivers neither more nor less than its title indicates. By "mot" Grimal understands 'word' in its Paninian sense, and so compounds, no matter of what length (as well as members thereof), are referenced. Furthermore, all words subject to inflection are displayed in their several occurring forms. The most striking characteristic of this work is its thoroughness--witness the more than three columns devoted to ca (pp. 106-8).

Each entry follows a standard format: number of occurrences, followed by verse and line references to those occurrences in the three editions of the plays taken as authoritative--Todar Mall's Mahaviracaritam, Bhandarkar's Malatimadhavam, (1) and Kane's Uttararamacaritam. Frequently, page and line references to those editions are superadded for clarity. In random checking. I found nothing missing.

No glosses are provided, and no context--this is not a concordance. The work, in itself, seems no more than a curiosity, of which the utility will be determined by those finding a use for it. Not infrequently, of course, forms are referenced that are not found in the standard dictionaries, or are considered there purely "lexical"--e.g., drpyat- (p. 141)--but without glosses or other discriminating characteristics, the exhaustiveness so convincingly displayed is fraught with ambiguity--e.g., where is eka used as a number, as a pronoun, or used adverbially in compounds?

A feature of Grimal's work is the inclusion of Prakrit words (in a separate index), which probably is of greater potential use, to linguists...