Bhagwad Gita Vivechanatmak Shabdakosh

Author(s): Prahlad C Divanji
Publisher: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt Ltd

Page 19

INTRODUCTION
1. Necessity of a Critical Word-Index.-II. Primary Wird-Units and the Critical Apparatus for them ; (a) Vulgate with Commentaries; (b) Kasmir Recen-ion with Commentaries and its Probable Genesis.-III Secondary, Tertiarv and Quaternary Word-Units.-IV. Word-linits Common to Parts I and II.-V. Concluding Remarks.
I. Necessity of a Critical Word - Index.
It was as early as December 1931 that I had felt the necessity of an exhaustive word index to the Bhagavad gitā because I had to deliver a presidential address at a Gitā-jayanti celebration at Bulsar where I then was and intended to speak therein on the repeated emphasis laid in that work on the relation between life and philosophy. I had felt the same necessity over again when in 1933 I drafted my Introduction to the critical edition of the Siddhantabindu published as No. 64 of the Gekwad's Oriental Series, wherein I had traced the history of the Advaita doctrine from the Vedic times to the time of the author, the 17th Century A. D. On none of those occasions, however, had I any idea as to the amount of necessity for the same felt by other students of the work. Nor did I then feel the urge to make an attempt to undertake that work myself because unless one feels that there is a chance of one's work being appreciated by those for whom it is meant, one does not think it worth his while to take it up. Such an urge came upon me only when in Dr. V. S. Sukhtankar's review of the Verse-Index of that work published by Dr. W. Kirfel of the University of Bonn' I found a hope expressed that “ some Indian scholars will wake up to the necessity of preparing at long last a complete index verborum of this crest-jewel of Indian literature, an index in which every occurrence of every inflected and uninflected word and every grammatical form will be separately indexed and cited as in Grassmann's Worterbuch to the Rgveda". It was impressed on my mind again and with greater force when I read in Prof. R. D. Laddu's review of Arthur C. March's work entitled "A Buddhist Bibliography"?, the prefatory remark that "the importance of a complete bibliography on a subject or an index verborumn to a work can hardly be over-estimated by any one interested in the pursuit of research. The rapid growth that has been taking place in the literature relating to comparative philology, philosophy and religion to-day necessarily demands of a researchist complete uptodate bibliographies on his subjects as well as index verbora to the works within the purview of his study. Where there are none of the kind he has to compile them himself for his own use, which is, no doubt, a giddy task that takes away so much of his energy”. I, therefore,
1. OLD. II. 5, p. 82. 2. Ibid III. 2, pp. 34-35.