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INTRODUCTION.
xxxiii
first quarter of the seventeenth century. The subscriptions in the London MSS. of the Vaigayanti contain the statement, which is borne out by the Introduction, that it was composed by Nandapandita, the son of Râmapandita Dharmadhikârin, an inhabitant of Benares, at the instigation of the Mahârâga Kesavanâyaka, also called Tammasânâyaka, the son of Kodapanâyaka; and a passage added at the end of the work states, more accurately, that Nandasarman (Nandapandita) wrote it at Kâsî (Benares) in the year 1679 of the era of Vikramabhâsvara (=A. D. 1622), by command of Kesavanayaka, his own king. These statements regarding the time and place of the composition of the Vaigayantî are corroborated by the fact that it refers in several cases to the opinions of Haradatta, who appears to have lived in the sixteenth century', while Nandapandita is not among the numerous authors quoted in the Vîramitrodaya of Mitramisra, who lived in the beginning of the seventeenth century, and who was consequently a contemporary of Nandapandita, if the above statement is correct; and that he attacks in a number of cases the views of the 'Eastern Commentators' (Prâkyas), and quotes a term from the dialect of Madhyadesa.
The subjoined translation is based upon the text handed down by Nandapandita nearly everywhere except in some of the Mantras, which have been rendered according to the better readings preserved in the Kathaka Grihya-sútra. The two Calcutta editions of the Vishnu-sútra, the second of which is a mere reprint of the first, will be found to agree in the main with the text here translated. They are doubtless based upon the Vaigayantî, as they contain several passages in which portions of Nandapandita's Commentary have crept into the text of the Satras. But the MS. used for the first Calcutta edition must have been a very faulty one, as both Calcutta editions, besides differing from the best MSS. of the Vaigayantî on a very great number of minor points, entirely omit the greater part of Chapter LXXXI
1 Bühler, Introduction to Åpastamba, p. xliii. 9 Bühler loc. cit.
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