The editio princeps of the Jaiminīyasaṃhitā of the Brahmāṇḍapurāṇa, Madhyamabhāga

Seven years after the rediscovery of the work from manuscripts and four years after the publishing of the first report on it, now the first two volumes of the editio princeps of the Jaiminīyasaṃhitā of the Brahmāṇḍapurāṇa, Madhyamabhāga (abbrev. JaiSa), are near to be issued. The length of the text (about 7000 verses) explains why it has been decided to publish this first edition on the basis of five good manuscripts only, with the Sanskrit in Roman transliteration facing a French annotated translation running in parallel. The complete critical edition (with the Sanskrit in devanāgarī script, the full critical apparatus and and English synopsis), based on the collation of all the available manuscripts, is planned to be published later on. After a short survey of the manuscripts, the paper will deal with the issues of the date (about 1300 AD, confirmed by one epigraphic evidence), the (Kerala royal) milieu of composition, and the (smārta vaiṣṇava brahmin) authorship of the JaiSa. The focus on its complex narrative structure and its poetic qualities will serve to underline the literary merits of the JaiSa, able to transcend the purāṇic genre for becoming both a itihāsa, a kathā and a kāvya.