This chapter and the following one present our motivations for undertaking the task of preparing a critical edition of the Kāśikāvṛtti (KV). A brief editorial history of the KV, revolving around two major events, its editio princeps and its first purportedly “critical” edition, will help to place our effort in a broader perspective. This will be followed in the next chapter/section of this book by a description of the methodology we have adopted in the various stages of our research, and a discussion of the variant readings that we have accepted into the reconstituted text. A description of the manuscripts used for this edition can be found in the end of the Introduction of this volume, before the beginning of the edition.

The first printed edition of the KV

In 1938, in his Descriptive Catalogue of the manuscripts kept at the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute in Pune, Belvalkar had already expressed the opinion that a critical edition of this work was most needed. In fact, even seventy years later, the KV, like the majority of the texts belonging to the Pāṇinian tradition, has still not had a proper critical edition.

Most of the editions of the KV seem to be influenced by the first printed edition by Paṇḍit Bāla Śāstrī, which appeared in Benares in the journal The Pandit between 1873 and 1879.