Catalogue of the library of the India Office. Vol. 2, pt. 1, Sanskrit books / by Prana Natha and Jitendra Bimala Chaudhuri.

  • Great Britain. India Office. Library.
Date:
1938
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Catalogue of the library of the India Office. Vol. 2, pt. 1, Sanskrit books / by Prana Natha and Jitendra Bimala Chaudhuri. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    PREFACE. The revised edition of the India Office Catalogue of Sanskrit Books, of which the present volume is the first section, will register in four volumes upwards of 26,000 separate works and editions. In the previous edition, now out of print, compiled by Dr. Reinhold Rost and published in 1897, some 6,200 publications were registered. The increase in the number of entries is not, however, a measure of the publications added to the Library since 1897, since the analytic cataloguing of collective works accounts for many thousands of entries im the revised catalogue. In form this is a dictionary catalogue, in which titles of works are the main entries, cross-references from authors, editors and series being included in- the same alphabetical | sequence. The catalogue registers Sanskrit and Prakrit texts, and translations of these into Kuropean languages. Trans- lations into an Oriental language are registered in the catalogue of the language of translation unless the Sanskrit text is printed with the translation. Commentaries in Sanskrit, with their sub-commentaries, are entered in the alphabetical order of their titles, under the title of the basic work. Parts of larger works which haye a recognised separate individuality are registered as independent works. ‘Thus the Bhagavad-gita is registered zn loco, and not under the heading Mahda-bhdrata. In other cases parts and selections are registered under the title of the work of which they form part, and are placed immediately after editions and translations of the whole work. ‘Editions with commentaries follow. Under each heading and sub-heading publications are arranged in order of date. Oriental scripts and Russian have been transliterated; the name of the original script being added in the caseé‘of books printed in South Indian characters. The form of the catalogue was prescribed by Dr. Thomas in 1918, and the greater part of it (comprising some 25,000 main entries) was written by Dr. Prana Natha in the course of two visits to England in 1924-27 and 1931-32. The circumstances in which it was written, and the fact that it was not possible for Dr. Prana Natha to reduce his work to consistency and. to see it through the press, made revision of the catalogue as a whole essential. This important and laborious task was carried out by Dr. J. B. Chaudhuri in ~ 1934-37. Dr. Chaudhuri also catalogued books received. between 1933 and 1935; and these have been included in the present catalogue so far as references to entries under the letters A—D (already in type in 1934) were not involved. He has mixed his labour with so many of the entries that it is just to name him as a collaborator in the work. é 7312 (2500)