वासवदत्ता (महाकवि सुबन्धु - श्लेष-प्रधान शास्त्रीय गद्यकाव्य सान्वय सटीक)

38 VĀSAVADATTĀ
roguery, moreover, bear no resemblance, either in plot or in
episode, to the amorphisms of Eustathios and his fellows. To
sum up, the spirit of the Sanskrit and of the Greek romancers is
as divergent as the audiences of scholars on the one hand, and of
weaklings on the other, for whom they wrote ; nor can any real
affinity, much less any direct connexion, be traced between the
romances of India and of Greece.
The Double Recension of the Vāsavadattā. Like the
Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyaṇa, the Vāsavadattā appears to be
preserved in two distinct recensions, which I would tentatively
call ‘northern’ and ‘southern.’ The first of these is represented
by the text of Hall (Calcutta, 1859) and the second by the
Madras edition of 1862, reprinted as an appendix to the present
volume, as well as by Krishnamachariar’s text (Srirangam, 1906–
1908). The ‘southern’ text, to which Hall’s manuscript D seems
also to belong, differs from the ‘northern’ chiefly in showing a
large number of interpolations, particularly śleṣas, virōdhas, and
other forms of similes appended to the series given by the
‘northern’ text. The spirit, however, of the ‘southern’ recension
is identical with that of the ‘northern.’ There is, indeed, one
omission of a complimentary allusion to the Buddhists (ed. Hall,
p. 235) and of one derogatory reference to the Jains (ed. Hall,
p. 297 ; cf. above, p. 7), but the retention of all other deprecia-
tory mentions of both sects shows that the ‘southern’ redactor
was not led to modify his text by any circumstances surrounding
him ; nor is there any added allusion in the ‘southern’ text which
seems to be specifically South Indian. It may be regarded as
practically certain that the ‘northern’ text represents Subandhu’s
original composition more closely than does the ‘southern’
recension, not only in view of the fact that the author of the
romance was, in all probability, a native of northern India, where
he almost indubitably wrote (cf. above, pp. 12–13), but also in
consideration of the familiar principles of textual criticism that
the shorter text is, other things being equal, to be preferred to
the longer, and that the more difficult reading is to be preferred
to the easier, since the ‘southern’ recension evidently seeks, by