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CHAPTER IV. CRITICAL STUDY. Under this and the next chapter we shall study the poet and the plays under different topics. In a subsequent chapter will be given the plots and general features of the plays-a sort of running commentary on the plays. 1. TEXT MATERIAL OF THE PLAYS. In his introduction to the Svapna, MM. Dr. T. Ganapati Sastri gave details of his tour for the search of MSS, in the course of which he "came across a palm-leaf MS of Natakas in the Manalikkara Matham near Padmanabha- puram". The MS was over three hundred years old and contained one hundred and five leaves written in Malayalam characters. In subsequent tours different MSS of the Svapna and other plays were found. Dr. Sastri brought out a critical edition of the plays discussing variant readings in the foot-notes. In view of the date we have assigned to Bh膩sa, the texts certainly do not represent the original plays. It would be interesting to get the original MSS and to see the script and characters in which they were written. It is certainly not impossible to come across the originals, judging from a similar case of A艣vaghosa. The texts presented to us probably represent southern versions, which in Pischel's opinion "present abridged and otherwise interpolated recensions."" There is also no warranty for taking the northern (Bengali) recensions as preserving the texts with absolute fidelity; they might have modified the texts "perhaps to a lesser degree." Prof. K. R. Pisharoti speaks very slightingly of the printed Trivandrum texts and pronounces them as "cooked up" by the editor, who, according to the Professor, was "ignorant of the manuscript traditions of the land", It may be noted, 1 Svapna, Intr., p. 1. 2 JRAS, 1927, p. 868. 4 IHQ, 5, p. 557. 3 3 JRAS, 1927, p. 868.