Panchatantra Tantrakhyayika

SR No.: 022630
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Johannes Hertel
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Publication Year: 1915
Total Pages: 164
Language: Sanskrit, English
Classification: Book_Devnagari & Book_English
File Size: 10 MB

Page 12

Preface
The missing Introduction and Notes to the present volume. The printing of the text of the Tantrakhyāyika, given on pages 1 to 143 of this volume, volume XIV of the Harvard Oriental Series, was completed September 16, 1913. Professor Hertel had promised to write a brief introduction giving a summary of the history of the Panchatantra. That summary would of course have been a résumé of the volume last cited, Das Pañcatantra, and would everywhere have referred to it for proofs and details. Professor Hertel had promised also to prepare for this volume a body of annotations which should justify the occasional departures of the text here given from the text of the editio major; should define the words which have not yet been given in the Sanskrit lexicons; should briefly explain passages that are difficult or that had been wrongly rendered in his own translation; and should make any needed comment on passages which had already evoked public discussion among the critics. The substance of much of the intended contents of these notes may be found in the numerous articles of Professor Hertel published during the last few years. Especially important in this connection are his articles in volume 25 of the Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, Einzelbemerkungen zu den Texten des Pañcatantra, and in volumes 67 to 69 of the Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, Indologische Analekta.
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Hertel's book, Das Pañcatantra, appeared only a short time before the outbreak of the world-war. The teaching-staff of the Gymnasium at Döbeln was reduced in number and the work of those left at home was correspondingly heavier. In December, 1914, Professor Hertel, while on a sick-bed, received his orders to join the colors. His latest letter to me is dated Borna (Saxony), February 9, 1915. It explains the situation as to the promised. Introduction and Notes, and says that he daily expects to be ordered to the front. If he returns to his wife and seven children and to the studies in which he has won such great distinction, he may yet prepare the Introduction and Notes so that they may be issued with the translation of the Tantrakhyāyika which I have undertaken.
The only course that lay open to me was to write the indispensable preliminary matter for this volume myself and to issue the volume 1 without the Introduction and Notes.
Acknowledgments.-To the printing-house of G. Kreysing of Leipzig a public acknowledgment of thanks is due. Dr. Hertel gave me the
1 The printed sheets were shipped from Leipzig to Boston via Rotterdam, and by the Holland-America Line, about the middle of February, 1915, the beginning of the great activity of the German submarines. In spite of torpedoes and mines and other dangers of the long list given in the war-insurance policy, the sheets arrived safe in Boston about the first of April.