ADVERTISEMENT.

Sacred-Texts Hindu   

p. i

   THE present work, both in its Sanskrit portion and in its English, is an amended reprint of three volumes,¹ published in India, which have already become very scarce. An abridged form of those volumes,² which subsequently p. iv appeared, contains nothing of the Sanskrit original but the Aphorisms.

   While, in the following pages, all the corrections obtainable from the abridgment have been turned to account, an immense number of improved readings have been taken from another source. Three several times I carefully read Dr. Ballantyne's translation in as many different copies of it; entering suggestions, in the second copy, without reference to those which had been entered in the first, and similarly making independent suggestions in my third copy. All these¹ were, on various occasions, submitted to Dr. Ballantyne; and such of them as did not meet his approval were crossed through. The residue, many more than a thousand, have been embodied p. v in the ensuing sheets, but are not indicated,¹ as successively introduced. The renderings proposed in the footnotes are, for the most part, from among those which have recently occurred to me as eligible.

   That Dr. Ballantyne had any thought of reissuing, in whatever form, the volumes mentioned at the beginning of this Advertisement, I was unaware, till some years after he had made over the abridgment of them to Professor Cowell, for publication.² Otherwise, I should have placed at his disposal the materials towards improvement of his second edition, which, at the cost of no slight drudgery, are here made available.

   The Sánkhya Aphorisms, in all the known commentaries on them, are exhibited word for word. The variants, now given, of the Aphorisms, afforded by accessible productions of that character, have been drawn from the works, of which only one has yet been printed, about to be specified:³

   I. The Sánkhya-pravachana-bháshya, by Vijnána Bhikshu. Revelant particulars I have given elsewhere. My oldest MS. of it was transcribed in 1654.

p. vi

   II. The Kápila-sánkhya-pravachana-sútra-vṛitti, by Aniruddha. Of this I have consulted, besides a MS. copied in 1818, formerly the property of Dr. Ballantyne, one which I procured to be copied, in 1855, from an old MS. without date.

   III. The Laghhu-sánkhya-sútra-vṛitti, by Nagesa. Of this I have two MSS., both undated. One of them is entire; but the other is defective by the three first Books.

   IV. The Sánkhya-pravachana-sútra-vṛitti-sára, by Vedánti Mahádeva. Here, again, only one of two MSS. which I possess is complete. The other, which breaks off in the midst of the comment on Book II., Aph. 15, is, in places, freely intetpolated from No. I. Neither of them has a date.

   Nearly all my longer annotations, and some of the shorter, were scrutinized, while in the rough, by the learned Professor Cowell, but for whose searching criticisms, which cannot be valued too highly, they would, in several instances, have been far less accurate than they now are.

F. H.      

MARLESFORD, SUFFOLK,
   Aug. 28, 1884.

Footnotes

p. iii

¹ Their titles here follow:

"The Aphorisms of the Sánkhya Philosophy of Kapila, with Illustrative Extracts from the Commentaries. [Book I.] Printed for the use of the Benares College, by order of Govt. N. W. P. Allahabad: Printed at the Presbyterian Mission Press. Rev. L. G. HAY, Sup't. 1852."

"The Aphorisms of the Sánkhya Philosophy, by Kapila, with Illustrative Extracts from the Commentary. Books II., III., & IV. In Sanskrit and English, Printed for the use of the Benares College, by order of Govt. N. W. P. (1st Edition, 550 Copies:— Price 12 annas.) Allahabad: Printed at the Presbyterian Mission Press. Rev. L. G. HAY, Superintendent. 1854."

"The Aphorisms of the Sánkhya Philosophy, by Kapila, with Illustrative Extracts from the Commentary by Vijnána-Bhikshu. Books V. & VI. Sanskrit and English. Translated by James R. Ballantyne, LL.D., Principal of the Govt. College, Benares. Printed for the use of the Benares College, by order of Govt. N. W. P . (1st Edition, 550 Copies:—Price 12 annas.) Allahabad: Printed at the Presbyterian Mission Press. Rev. L. G. HAY, Sup't. 1856."

² Occupying Fasciculi 32 and 81 of the New Series of the Bibliotheca Indica, issued in 1862 and 1865. The proof-sheets of only 32 pages of the whole, from the beginning, were read by Dr. Ballantyne; the rest, by Professor Cowell.

The title of the abridged form runs: "The Sánkhya Aphorisms of Kapila, with Extracts from Vijnána Bhiks[h]u's Commentary," &c. But this is a misrepresentation, as regards Book I., which takes up 63 pages out of the total of 175. The expository matter in that Book is derived, very largely, from other commentators than Vijnána. p. iv Vedánti Mahádeva mainly supplies it at the outset, and, towards the end, well nigh exclusively, Aniruddha. Some share of it, however, will not be traced; it having been furnished by one of Dr. Ballantyne's pandits, whom I have repeatedly seen in the very act, as by his own acknowledgment, of preparing his elucidations.

¹ Many of them, especially in Books II.-VI., rest on readings of the original preferable to those which had been accepted.

Though not fully published till 1856, my edition of the Sánkkya-pravachana-bháshya, its preface alone excepted, was in print as early as 1853; and Dr. Ballantyne had a copy of it. A few arbitrarily chosen words apart, his text, after Book I., is borrowed from it throughout, but with no mention of the fact. My advice was unheeded, that he should profit by the copious emendations which I had amassed and digested from better manuscripts than those to which I at first had access. Greatly to his disservice, he would not be induced even to look at them. It faring the same with my typographical corrections, he has, here and there, reproduced errors, more or less gross, which might easily have been avoided. See, for specimens. pp. 197, 288, 357, 373, 374, 381, 390.

p. v

¹ Nor has attention been topically directed to sundry blemishes of idiom which have been removed; as, for example, by the substitution of 'unless' for 'without,' of 'in time' for 'through time,' of 'presently' for 'just,' and of 'between the two' for 'between both.'

² "At the time of his departure from India, in 1860, Dr. Ballantyne left with me the MS. of his revised translation of the Sánkhya Aphorisms," "Notice," in the Bibliotheca Indica, New Series, No, 81.

³ For details respecting these commentaries and their authors, see my Contribution towards an Index to the Bibliography of the Indian Philosophical Systems, or my Preface to the Sánkhya-sára.

p. vi

¹ I once had a second copy of this very rare work, bearing no date, but most venerable in appearance. Like many of my manuscript treasures, it was lent, and never found its way back to me.