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xxxiv
VISHNU.
(3-22), the genuineness of which is proved by analogous passages in the other Smritis 1 An excellent copy of the Vaigayantî in possession of Dr. Bühler has, together with three London MSS. of that work and one London MS. containing the text only, enabled me to establish quite positively nearly in every case the readings sanctioned by Nandapandita. I had hoped to publish a new edition of the text prepared from those MSS., and long ready for the press, before publishing my English version. This expectation has not been fulfilled, but it is hoped that in the mean time this attempt at a translation will be welcome to the students of Indian antiquity, and will facilitate the understanding of the text printed in Gîvânanda Vidyâsâgara's cheap edition, which is probably in the hands of most Sanskrit scholars. The precise nature of the relation in which the text of my forthcoming edition stands to the Calcutta editions may be gathered from the large specimens of the text as given in the best MSS., that have been edited by Dr. Bühler in the Bombay Digest, and by myself in two papers published in the Transactions of the Royal Bavarian Academy of Science.
Nandapandita has composed, besides the Vaigayantî, a treatise on the law of adoption, called Dattaka-mîmâmsâ?, a commentary on the code of Parâsara, a work called Vidvanmanoharâ-smritisindhu, one called Srâddhakalpa-latâ, and commentaries on the Mitâksharâ and on Adityâkârya's Åsaukanirnaya. All these works belong to the province of Hindu law, and both his fertility as a writer in that branch of Indian science, and the reputation enjoyed by some of his works even nowadays, must raise a strong presumption in favour of his knowledge of the subject. The
The first edition of the Vaishnava Dharmasastra' was published in Bengali type by Bhavânîkarana; the second, in Devanagarî type, is contained in Givananda Vidyasagara's Dharmashâstrasangraha (1876).
* This work has been published repeatedly at Calcutta and Madras, and translated into English by Sutherland (1821), which translation has been reprinted in Stokes' Hindu Law Books. The rest of the above list is made up from an enumeration of Nandapandita's Tikâs at the end of Dr. Bühler's copy of the Vaigayantî, from an occasional remark in the latter work itself (XV, 9), and from Professor Weber's Catalogue of the Berlin Sanskrit MSS.
in Stokes' Hindus andapandita's Tikus in the latter work it.se
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