The Hindu Law Codes (The Dharma Sastra) ( Original Sanskrit Text, Transliteration, English Translation with Notes and Exposition)

Language: Original Sanskrit Text, Transliteration, English Translation with Notes and Exposition
Pages: 553

PrefaceSeveral of my friends from various parts of India to whom I am greatly indebted for their help and sympathy for the completion of my English translation of the Ramayana, Mahabharata, and of other Sanskrit works, requested me to undertake an English translation of the 20 Hindu Smrtis which pass under the general name of Dharma Sastras. But I always expressed my reluctance to undertake the task for I did not consider myself competent enough to do the same. It is only to satisfy the pressing request of a host of kind undertake this most arduous work of publishing, in a collected form, the Text and a literal prose English Translation, with profuse Explanatory Notes, of all the Samhitas.Some of these Samhitas have already been translated by some eminent scholars of the West, but no attempt has yet been made to translate all of these valuable works and publish them in a few handy volumes so that every student of Hindu Law and Literature may easily possess them for is own use. This is indeed a sad desideratum, especially in a century when so much activity is going on both in East and West to place the intellectual and moral greatness of the ancient Hindus before the English-knowing world. The value of Samhitas as a sacred record of the life and customs of the ancient Hindus stands supreme over every other Hindu religious work, and it is but necessary that they should be made as popular as possible. To this great and sacred end I have undertaken the present work. I have very carefully collated the Text, with the help of a number of Pundits, and after carefully going through a number of Texts both in Manuscript and print, I have attempted to make the translation as much literary as possible, keeping an eye more on accuracy than on literary excellence. To elucidate the Te