World of Philosophy

Author(s): Christopher Key Chapple, Intaj Malek, Dilip Charan, Sunanda Shastri, Prashant Dave
Publisher: Shanti Prakashan

Page 601

and was pursued here and there with no cordination and under no organisation. But we fail to notice that we do have this concept in our cultural traditions. We know that our life in this land is embodied in 16 Sanskāras, which has no doubt enhanced our lives, right from impregnaion through ascending to heaven. Of these one is Nāmakarana Sanskāra i.e. ceremony of giving name to infant. This one aspect. Secondly, interest in place name in our country is definitely traced is the Sthalapurāņas i.e. Purāņas which describes places or say topography. These Purāņas contain legendary stories about the places, sometimes about the mythology and sometimes about imaginary incidents. In our cultural tradition Namamahimā, Nāmasmarana, Nāmajāpa, Sahastranāma have attained a pivotal place. These are not thoughtless activities. This shows that each place in our country has more or less some story to call our attention. This means that studies of the names of places are not alien to our thiought process. But one thing is certain that this discipline somehow has not attracted the academic world in our country for which reasons are not known to us and hence one may say that it is still in its infancy. It is also evident from the fact that this has not been employed as a sourcematerial in any book on early history of our country. Works published on place names
Of late this discipline has drawn our attention of some of our scholers. Mecdonald and Keith have published in two parts the Vedic Index of Names and Subjects' in 1958. Sorrens has to his credit 'Index to the Names in the Mahābhārat' in 1963. Mallalcesskar published 'Dictionary of Pāli Proper Names in two parts in 1960. 'Prākrut Proper Names' in two parts was prepared by Mohanlal Mehta and K.R. Chandra in 1970. These are just few examples. Along with place names the studies on personal names, family names, surnames, pseudonym were also taken up. Sunitikumar Chatterjee has discussed the origin and growth of place names in his book The Origin and Development of Bengoli Language.' Shree Krushnapad Goswami furthered the concept of Sunitikumarji. R.C. Heremothe has done some studies on the place names of Karnataka. Kunduri Ishwardatt has tried to established the 'Indian Place Name Society in 1945 but did not materialised. At last "The Place Name Society of India' was founded in 1978 at Mysore. This author was the member of the Executive committe of this society in its first decade.
General apathy towards this science
Considering that though the onomastic is a science by itself, unfortunately it has yet to get due recognition from scholars across varied disciplines. Without doubt, though it is certainly a very useful non
552