It gives me great pleasure to bring out a second, revised edition of a very important Natya treatise, critically edited with extensive notes in English by Dr. V. Raghavan on the occasion of his 114th birthday.
Nrttaratnavall written by Jaya Senapati, a commander of the Kakatiyas of Warangal in Andhra, is the most noteworthy work on Natya after Abhinavagupta's Commentary on Bharata's Natya Sastra.
Dr. Raghavan had edited this text from two Telugu palm-leaf manuscripts in the Saraswati Mahal Library, Thanjavur, a fragmentary mss. in the Asiatic Society, Kolkata, and with support material from a large number of Natya texts. This work brings forth the Editor's outstanding scholarship in the field of Natya and allied fields of study for five decades.
This work has the unique touch of Dr. Raghavan who had edited it in the most elaborate manner for the first time under the Madras Government Oriental Series, nearly six decades ago. His extensive historical Introduction on the author and the work, the contribution of Andhra to Sanskrit literature during the Kakatiya period, a critical and comparative study of the work in relation to other texts, textual notes, a concordance of contexts and passages in Bharata, Abhinavagupta and Jaya, a Sanskrit Index of all technical words with their meanings and incidence in the text and supplemented by a similar explanatory Index in English - all of which make this work most precious.
Jaya's Nrttaratnavali is invaluable for its many insights, among which are descriptions of the Desi-Lasya and Desi forms of Natya that are found here in large number than in other texts. It also provides an in-depth study of traditions and interpretations of writers, Kirtidhara and Tandu, particularly on the Karanas, correlating the textual corpus with the sculptures of these poses in Thanjavur, Chidambaram and Kumbhakonam with their mutual differences. These two subjects have been dealt elaborately in the Introduction by the Editor collating the material with those of eminent writers like Parsvadeva, Somesvara, Sargadeva and others.
The present edition of the Nrttaratnavali is based on three manuscripts, two full ones in the T. M. S. S. M. Library, Tanjore, and a fragment in the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Calcutta. The following are the details about these mss. referred to in the footnotes as A, B and C.
A. This is a Telugu Palm-leaf ms. in the T. M. S. S. M. Library, Tanjore, bearing the old Burnell no. 11540 and described under no. 10672 of the new Descriptive Catalogue of the Library, vol. XVI. The ms. is highly corrupt and generally worse than the other Tanjore ms. noted below, though occasionally better than the latter and very helpful. The copy in this ms. had been revised by someone and some corruptions have been marked and emendations noted. In this and the second Tanjore ms. also, even where the lettering is correct, wrong spacings and separations of words cause trouble by creating misleading readings.
B. Another Telugu Palm-leaf ms. in the same Library, Burnell no. 11541, new Descriptive Catalogue no. 10673. This is also full of mistakes. The Transcript in the Madras Govt. Oriental Mss. Library and my basic copy are from this manuscript.
Both A and B have gaps, short and long; though a few of these are common to both and have necessitated my leaving a gap in the text presented and reproducing in the footnotes the corresponding portions from Bharata or some later writer, there are some places where the break in one ms. is made good by the other.
C. This is a fragmentary Devanagari paper manuscript belonging to the Asiatic Society of Bengal, noted on p. 58 (No. 1112) of the "Alphabetical List of Mss. purchased for the Government of Bengal upto 1891" and printed at the end of vol. XI of Notices of Sanskrit Manuscripts by H. P. Shastri, Calcutta, 1895. In the course of his preparation of the description of this manuscript for the further volumes of the Descriptive Catalogue of Sanskrit Manuscripts in the Asiatic Society, Prof. Chintaharan Chakravarti drew my attention to it and thanks to the help of the authorities of the Society, I could borrow the manuscript. This ms. extends from about the beginning of chapter IV, starting exactly at verse 11, near the end of its first half, to about the middle of chapter VII, ending exactly at verse 132, near the end of the first half of the verse. It bears the library number 1112-57-D.6; as its sheets are numbered 9 to 30, the text in the original ms. itself could have started only from about the middle of chapter III. The ms., as can be seen from the footnotes at the relevant places in the present edition, is not free from gaps, but luckily some of the gaps in both A and B could be filled up with its help. The writing of the ms. is extremely difficult; apart from indication of e, ai, o and au by dandas on the sides and the absence of anusvara, the letter-formations are not normal; the original had not been read properly by the scribe and spelling mistakes also abound in the ms. However, taken together with A and B, it proved to be of inestimable assistance and I should say, the places where none of the three mss. could be helpful were comparatively few.
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