Descriptive Catalogue of Sanskrit Manuscripts Asiatic Society Vol 08 Part 02

SR No.: 020275
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Hariprasad Shastri, Chintahran Chakravarti
Publisher: Asiatic Society
Publication Year: 1940
Total Pages: 340
Language: English, Sanskrit
Classification: Catalogue
File Size: 19 MB

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present author who claims to have directly belonged to the school. A similar list is also found in the Kramottama (6351-2). It is to be noted that both the lists contain names otherwise unknown.
The Mantra-kamalakara (6238) is a little-known work of the celebrated Kamalākara Bhatta, author of the Nirnaya-sindhu, son of Rāmakrsna,grandson of Nārāyana and great-grandson of Rāmeśvara. The work is stated to have been compiled for the benefit of the author's son, Ananta. The section on the worship of Rāma belongs to Rāmakrşņa, father of Kamalākara. Another manuscript of the work referred to in A Catalogue of Sanskrit Manuscripts in the Private Libraries of North-Western Provinces (Allahabad, 1877-86) and mentioned by Aufrecht (Cat. Cat., I. 429) is scarcely accessible at the present moment 1.
The Mantra-muktāvală (6239) of Purņa-prakāśa, of which the Society possesses a manuscript complete in 25 chapters, appears to be one of the oldest of Tantric digests. The MS. of the Society was copied in 1480 V.S. (=1424 A.D.). The work is stated to have been based principally on the Prapanca-sāra. It appears from the extremely corrupt and obscure introductory and concluding verses that the author, an ascetic, was a follower of the school of Sankara.
The Society's collection of manuscripts of the Tantra-sāra of Krşņānanda is specially interesting. It is a sixteenth century work on Tantra rituals very popular in Bengal. But the Society's manuscripts of the work are almost all in non-Bengali scripts. Two more or less complete manuscripts (6187-8) are in the Newari script. There are also three manuscripts in the Nagari (6190-1, 6576) and one in the Bengali script (6577) containing only extracts. Portions of the work are found in a mutilated form, with occasional omissions intervening, in two manuscripts, one (6266) in Nagari and the other in Newari (6267), as also in a Bengali manuscript (6189) where the order of the topics is different from that in the editions of the Tantra-sära. It is not known if the last three manuscripts as also one described under No. 6402 belong to works based on the work of Krsnānanda like Rāmānanda's Samgraha, of which there is a manuscript in the Society (II. A. 48), complete in ten chapters. It is also possible that the Tantra-sāra, along with other works, borrowed from the same source which, or rather fragments of which, can be
1 For two more little-known works of the same author, cf. Indian Culture, V.211-4.