Svapnavasavadattam - Appendices - A Survey of Bhāsa's Manuscripts

For the last three decades, scholars dealing with the Bhasa con­troversy were assessing the material, mainly made available by T. Ganapati 8astri. To the thirty-seven manuscripts used by him, later scholars added ten more, making a total of forty-seven. Those who opposed the views of the Trivandrum Curator could not lay their hands on any fresh manuscript as evidence. What little they could achieve in regard to the problem was in the form of providing some information about the staging of these plays. Even in this respect the information presented was meagre and it was not enough to convince the schol­arly world.

An attempt was made to trace the original codex, discovered and used by Shri Ganapati 8astri, but it was found missing. The possibility of splitting up the codex was also carefully looked into, though it could not be satisfactorily established. It was against this background, that a survey of the so-called `Bhasa's manuscripts', was conducted and as a result it was known that quite a number of fresh manuscripts were there to be utilized by scholars. A verification with the printed texts showed that most of them were not utilized for editorial purposes.

The survey revealed that there are at least two hundred and thirty-three manuscripts of these plays, at present. Leaving aside the forty-seven manuscripts already made use of, there were one hundred and eighty-six fresh manuscripts. The peculiar feature is that almost all of them (with exception of one or two recent Devanagari copies pre­pared on them) are on palm leaves and in the Malayalam script. They are generally believed to be 300 years old. At present these manu­scripts are deposited in different parts of India and abroad. The largest number of manuscripts is found in the Kerala University, Manuscripts Library, Trivandrum. Other institutions where they are preserved in­clude: Sanskrit College Library, Trippunithura, Kochi; Government Oriental Manuscripts library, Chennai; Vishveshwarananda Vedic Research Institute Collection, Sadhu Ashram, Hosiarpur, Punjab; Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Pune; Brahmasvam Vatakke

The manuscripts hitherto known, including the ones used by Ganapati Sastri (given in brackets), may be distributed among Bhasa's plays in Trivandrum as follows:

Paficharatram 8 (2);
Madhyamavyayoga17 5 (2);
Karnabharam 6 (2);
Balacaritam 9 (2);
Carudattam 6 (2);
Abhisekanatakam 52 (25);
Pratijnayaugandharayarrom 35 (5);
Svapnavasavadattam 18 (4).
Dutvakyam 21 (3);
Dutghatotkacam 7 (1);
Avimarakam 11 (2);
Pratimanatakam 49 (6).

The survey made it abundantly clear that Kerala could very well be called the home of the so-called Bhasa manuscripts. The hope of dis­covering a manuscript of these plays in other parts of India, especially in the North, cherished by some scholars, is yet to be fulfilled in spite of vigorous search.

As the manuscript of Svapnavasavadattam, the best known of the series, was moth-eaten in several places, and the manuscripts of Karnabharanam and Carudattam were incomplete, Shri Ganapati Sastri tried to obtain the complete manuscripts of these plays, with a view to edit and then publish them. With this end in view, he ad­dressed several Sanskrit scholars, European as well as Indian. Many of them replied to say that even these manuscripts however incom­plete, of Bhasa's natakas which had long been regarded as lost were in themselves a very great acquisition, but fortunately, he was able to obtain a complete, though not correct, manuscript of each of the two

स्वप्नवासवदत्तम् समाप्तम्

This agrees with what was supposed to be the full name of the play. At the end of the manuscript of Pratijilayaugandharayanam, is written the full name of • J g After this, during another tour, Shri Ganapati SastrT obtained at Haripad a manuscript of Avimarakam from Mr. Subramonyan Moottatu of Puttiyal. The Svapnavasavadattam with the aid of the new manuscript has assumed a complete form. When SvapnavAsavadattam was in the press, another manuscript of it was secured from Krishna Tantri of Thazhamon Matham Chengannur and a separate manuscript of Pratijilayaugandharayanam and of Abhisekanatakam, were also obtained from the same source.

After Svapnavasavadattam and some other plays were pub­lished, a manuscript of the Svapnavasavadattam was obtained from the Killinanu Palace and another manuscript with a number of plays other than Svapnavasavadattam, from Mr. Nilkanthan Chakyar of Manganam.