महावीरचरितम् (महाकवि भवभूति - वीररस-प्रधान रामकथा नाटक सम्पूर्ण ७ अङ्क सटीक)

xix] Proposed by the General Editor of this Series
Canon 1. A good method should utilize the logical divisions of the
text—that is, the divisions of the play into acts, and the divisions of
the acts into stanzas and prose-passages. Canon 1 forbids us to cite the
play by pages, since this ignores the division into acts, and results in
endless discord as between different editions. Again, it forbids us to
number either the speeches or the lines from the beginning of the act,
since this ignores the division of the act into prose and verse, and results
in the very undesirable possibility of citing the same verse in more than
one way (by stanza-number or speech-number or line-number).
Canon 2 (corollary to canon 1). The numbering should start anew
with each division.—The numbering of stanzas should start afresh at the
beginning of each act; and the numbering of prose-lines should start afresh
from the last stanza preceding the prose-passage.
Discord from numbering stanzas in one sequence for entire play.—
The numbering of all stanzas in one sequence from beginning to end of
the play has this result : that any differences in the number of stanzas
in prior acts as between different editions become operative or even
cumulative for any later act or acts. The serious disadvantages of this
bad practice are strikingly illustrated by four European editions of the
Śākuntala, namely Böhtlingk's of 1846, Williams's of 1876, Pischel's of
1877, and Cappeller's of 1909. In all these four editions act vii has thirty-
five stanzas (no more and no less), and these stanzas (apart from mere
variants) are identical. In Böhtlingk they are numbered from 160 to 194;
in Williams, from 165 to 199; in Pischel, from 187 to 221; and in
Cappeller, from 155 to 189. This is confusion worse confounded, and
(with all deference to these honoured names) it is the more inexcusable
because it is wholly needless.
The discord results primarily from the fact that the numbering of
stanzas goes in one sequence from the beginning of the play to the end,
and secondarily from the fact that, for example, act iii contains twenty-four
stanzas in one text (so Böhtlingk, Cappeller) and forty-one in another (so
Pischel). This wholly wrong method of numeration continues the discord
of act iii through all the remaining four acts. If only the numeration
began anew with each act, the stanza-numbers of act vii would be wholly
accordant in all four editions, and the same references would have been
precisely correct for each and all. The discord in the other acts is on the
whole so slight as to cause little trouble, and even that little is avoidable
(see below, p. xx).
Canon 3. The citations should be precise.—A citation which makes it
necessary to search an entire page or long prose-passage is not precise.
It should be so precise that you can instantly find the exact word intended.