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Review
would counter-act the effects of Fire (n.30). He also notes that an Orissan Sasana village belongs to the Dandaka variety, wherein the street or streets run from West to East (n.44).
The second part of the text contains the details of the ritual in prose. It consists mainly of three ceremonies, viz. (i) taking possession of the land required for the village from the Beings living on it, (ii) making it ritually pure for settlement and (iii) offering water to the site of the village and making the land 'pregnant by installing a rectangular stone slab into the pit, so that it would bring prosperity to its inhabitants. Many incantations prescribed for this ceremony are Vedic and a number of deities mentioned here are of ancient popular belief, about whom we know next to nothing. The worship of Lakshmi and Nārāyaṇa on the stone-slab placed in the centre of the village obviously seems to have been introduced into the ceremony in later times when the śāsana villages played an important part in the cult of Jagannath. Dr. Tripathi's suggestions for rectifications in certain views held by Shri Datta, the author of Town Planning in Ancient India and Dr. G. Pfeffer, the author of a monograph on the Brāhmins living in the Sasana villages of the Puri District, seem quite convincing. It would have been better if the Sanskrit text was printed in Devanagari characters instead of Roman ones.
Dr. G. C. Tripathi deserves congratulations for bringing the unpublished text to light and preparing an illuminating monograph on it.
- H. G. Shastri
Yoga Philosophy and Religion' by Surendranath Dasgupta, publisher, Motilal Banarasidass, Delhi, Reprint : 1973, 1978, Price Rs. 35/
This book written by a renowned scholar--the late Prof. S. N. Dasgupta gives a brief exposition of the Patañjala Yogasutras, as explained by his commentators. The work consists of 15 chapters divided into two parts. Part I (ch I-VII) deals with Yoga metaphysics and Part II expounds Yoga Ethics and practice. The book is to some extent an ealarged version of 'The Study of Patañjali' written by Dr. S. N. Dasgupta as a Griffith Prize Essay in 1914 and published in 1920.
In the introductory chapter on Praksti, he states that according to the yoga system, guņas are substantive entities constituting Prakrti a characters of Praksti. He does not approve of the tendency to identify prakrti with avidyā of the Vedāntists.
How the connection of non-intelligent and independent Praksti with the intelligent souls becomes possible is explained in detail in ch. II. By
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