Dr V S Sukthankar was the first editor of the Critical Edition. He said, “The Mahabharat is an amazing mixture of versions”. This was because it was handed down from bard to bard by word of mouth.
The mechanism to create a “Critical Edition” is called Textual Criticism. While this is a Western technique, it has been modified by Sukthankar to suit Indian texts. This methodology is called “Indian Textual Crticism”.
The Adi Parvan (the first parvan) itself is 4 times the size of Illiad and Odyssey put together. (and 1.5 times the Ramayana). Sukthankar realized that the western methodology could not be imitated in totality for analysing the Mahabharata.
The Virata Parvan Critical Edition was based on the vulgate text of the Bombay edition with Neelakantha’s commentary (published in 1883). Sukthankar decided to use this same text as the starting point for the Critical Edition.
We can appreciate the difficulty of the task when we realize that Sukthankar found 235 manuscripts of just the Adi Parvan itself, in different Indian scripts. There were hundreds of manuscripts, in devasthanas and libraries of rich people and public libraries.
Purely on the basis of the methodology, the editor (Sukthankar) has to handle these problems carefully and choose the correct variant.
Dr Sukthankar has done all this work to prepare the constituted text of the Adi Parvan. The critical apparatus and appendix containsrmation. This is why the Adiparva was received with such acclaim!
“The Adiparvan in Dr Suktankar's critical edition of the Mahabharata is now complete and I have no hesitation in saying this is the most important event in the history of Sanskrit philology since Max Muller’s edition of the Rigveda with Sayana’s commentary” ~ Prof Winternitz.
