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

xxiii] Proposed by the General Editor of this Series

pāda 4. But i. 5⁴ means act i, prose-passage immediately following stanza 5,
subdivision 4.—It will be observed that this method has the incidental
advantage (a very considerable one) of showing on its face whether a line
of poetry or a line of prose is intended.—The prose-passages vary in length
from a single word to several pages. Examples of long prose-passages
(forty to sixty lines) in the Śākuntala are those following i. 24, vi. 1, vi. 24,
vii. 20. Precision of reference (and not alone the need of distinguishing
prose-citations from stanza-citations) requires a third element indicating
the subdivision.—What then shall this subdivision of the prose-passage be?
The subdivision of the prose-passage should be the printed line.—
The natural subdivisions of a prose-passage are the single speeches. But
these are very uneven in length, and the numbers employed to indicate
them would come at such irregular intervals and places on the page as not
to be readily caught by the eye (a grave disadvantage). Moreover, a single
speech is sometimes so long that a single number would not show precisely
enough where a word or phrase is. In the case of prose-passages, therefore,
it is best to use the printed line as the basis of subdivision, and to place
the line-numbers at brief and regular intervals, and always in the same
relative position on the page, that is, in the left-hand margin, and never in
the right-hand margin. The numbering of the lines of the prose-passage
must of course start anew with each new passage (canon 2, p. xix). The
numbering of the lines or of the speeches from the beginning of the act is
ruled out as wholly illogical and as a source of confusion (canon 1).¹
In Konow's Karpūra-mañjarī, Cambridge, 1901, the numbers of the
act, and of the stanza as counted from the beginning of the act, are clearly
shown. For the prose between two consecutive stanzas, I have numbered
each clause (not speech and not line) of prose, counting from the prior stanza.
The disadvantage of this method is that the numbers have to be put at
irregular intervals and in irregular positions, and are therefore not easily
caught by the eye. The disadvantage is so serious as to condemn this my
former method.

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¹ The Mālavikāgnimitra of Mr. S. P. Pandit,
Bombay, 1889, numbers the stanzas from
the beginning of the act. But it also
numbers the speeches from the beginning
of the act, without distinction of prose
and verse or of Sanskrit and Prākrit.
Mr. Pandit makes a great gain in sim-
plicity by using the same numbers (many,
of course, are skipped) for reference to his
chhāyā and his variants on the lower part
of the page and to his notes at the end of
the volume. His speech-numbers are
very easily caught by the eye because
they are always in the same relative
position, a free vertical column on the
left-hand edge of the page, no matter
whether it is a right-hand page or a left-
hand page. So far as convenience goes,
I have long deemed this to be the best
edition of its time among Sanskrit plays.
Only the speeches are sometimes too long
for a precise citation, and the numbering
of speeches from the beginning of the act
is wrong in principle.