Catalogue of a collection of Sanskrit manuscripts / by A.C. Burnell. Part I. Vedic manuscripts.

  • Arthur Coke Burnell
Date:
1869
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Catalogue of a collection of Sanskrit manuscripts / by A.C. Burnell. Part I. Vedic manuscripts. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    PREFACE. The MSS. about to be described were collected during a residence of several years in the South of India. In search¬ ing for MSS. which 1 required for my own studies, I often met with other works hut little known to European Sans- kritists, and which seemed to me to be worth preserving; such works I purchased (when it was possible to do so) or had transcribed. It is hardly necessary to say that anything like a complete collection of Sanskrit MSS. which would fairly represent the literature of the Brahmans in its entirety, cannot be made in any one part of India. Some works may be met with in ail considerable places, others must be sought in peculiar localities. This is especially the case with Yedic works. The Black Yajur Yeda is the Veda of the South of India, and is little known in the North ; on the other hand the White Yajur and Atharva Yedas are unknown in the South of India, except to a few Brahmans who have wandered there from the Mahratta country or Benares.* Again, in the South of India, all the systems of philosophy studied by the Brahmans are derived from the Vedanta; the Mimamsa was never much studied, and is now professed by less than half a dozen pandits; the Sahkhya and Yoga are unknown; and though elementary works on the Nyaya are very com¬ mon, every student who wishes to make progress goes to Navadvipa or Benares, and most of the MSS. referring to this system which exist in South India have been brought from those places, and are written in the Devanagari cha¬ racter. Medical, Astronomical, and Astrological works are more studied in Malabar than in any other part of India, and the Yedic sacrifices were formerly kept up in that pro¬ vince better than anywhere else. The Smarta Brahmans still keep up the Yedic rites to a certain extent; but the followers of Bamanujacarya and Madhvacarya have adopted * So in this collection there are but few Rig and Atharva Yedas MSS., and on the other hand the Black Yajur and Sama Vedas are well represented.