Variants from “Uttararamacarita” and “Kāvyānuśāsana” of Hemacandra
By Jagruti S. Pandya
Summary
Jagruti Pandya’s article compares selected verses from Bhavabhūti’s drama “Uttararamacarita” with their counterparts in Hemacandra’s twelfth‑century treatise “Kāvyānuśāsana.” Hemacandra cites numerous examples from classical poetry to illustrate figures of speech and prosody, and Pandya shows that he often quotes Bhavabhūti verbatim but occasionally adapts words or meter to suit his pedagogical goals. The paper catalogues fifty‑six verses where Hemacandra’s readings diverge from extant manuscripts of the “Uttararamacarita.” Some differences are minor orthographic variations, while others involve substituting synonyms or reshaping a compound to highlight a particular rhetorical device. Pandya analyses these variants to determine whether they reflect scribal errors, deliberate didactic changes or evidence for an alternative textual tradition. She argues that Hemacandra may have drawn on a different recension of Bhavabhūti’s drama preserved in Gujarat or that his modifications reveal how medieval scholars creatively adapted authoritative works for instructional purposes. By placing Hemacandra’s quotations alongside the standard text of “Uttararamacarita,” the article contributes to the textual criticism of both works and illustrates the dynamic interplay between creative literature and poetics treatises in medieval India.
Conclusion
Pandya’s comparison underscores that Hemacandra was not simply a passive compiler of examples; he actively engaged with Bhavabhūti’s text, sometimes altering verses to emphasise particular poetic techniques. The study highlights the importance of cross‑checking citations in rhetorical treatises against their source texts to identify variant readings and understand how medieval scholars interpreted classical literature. Such work enriches the critical editions of both “Uttararamacarita” and “Kāvyānuśāsana” and sheds light on the transmission of Sanskrit drama in western India.