The stemmatic method, despite a long history of criticism, has remained a frame of reference for critical editions in Sanskrit studies as well as other philologies. In the present article a few lesser read authors, Alberto Blecua and Hermann Fränkel, are introduced, whose critiques of the method are apt to shatter the whole edifice of objective editing. Blecua levels fundamental criticism against the method, and Fränkel eventually takes refuge to the “best reading” as his guiding principle. In order to demonstrate how this attitude can enhance, or ruin, one's reading experience, the first stanza of the Haṭhayogapradīpikā is read textcritically in the second part.