Harvard Oriental Series

This edition of the Sanskrit text of the Subhāṣitaratnakoṣa—in the editors’ opinion the oldest known general anthology of Sanskrit verse—is the result of years of work deciphering and comparing the five different versions to arrive at a complete and reliable text. The editors’ aim has been to restore, as far as the sources permit, the text compiled by Vidyākara somewhere between A.D. 1100 and 1130.

The Navya-nyaya (“New Method”) school of logic has exerted a profound influence on Indian philosophy since the twelfth century. In this system, with its hierarchy of abstractions rather than of classes, the doctrine of negation is crucial. Bimal Krishnal Matilal expounds Navya-nyaya theory by systematically translating its arguments into the language of Western logic. He also provides texts and literal translations of two standard works on negation, one each from the orthodox and the radical wings of the school, and a detailed commentary of his own upon them.

For nearly a thousand years the brilliant analysis of aesthetic experience set forth in the Locana of Abhinavagupta, India’s founding literary critic, has dominated traditional Indian theory on poetics and aesthetics. The Locana, presented here in English translation for the first time, is a commentary on the ninth-century Dhvanyaloka of Anandavardhana, which is itself the pivotal work in the history of Indian poetics.

This edition of Rig Veda presents the text (in Roman characters) in its original metrical arrangement and closely approximates the pronunciation of the time of its composition. Restorations deviating from the received Samhita text are printed in italics, so the traditional text can easily be reconstituted without reference to other editions.

This volume explores the earliest available version of the Sikh canon. The book contains the first critical description and partial edition of the Goindval Pothis, a set of proto-scriptural manuscripts prepared in the 1570s. The manuscripts also contain a number of hymns by non-Sikh saints, some of them not found elsewhere.

A detailed discussion by the editor complements this critical edition and translation of the phonetical treatise (Prātisākhya) of the Saunaka Samhita, one of two versions of the second oldest Indian text, the Saunaka Atharvaveda. The 19th century edition of the text by W.D. Whitney has long been out of date; this reevaluation provides insights into early grammatical thought and helps to re-establish the textual tradition of the Atharvaveda.

This edition is based on new manuscripts of this important treatise on classical Sanskrit poetics by the famous eleventh-century King Bhoja of Malwa. The text is important because of the theoretical treatment of the erotic sentiment (śṛṅgāra) in classical Sanskrit texts, and also as a mine of quotations from Sanskrit and Prakrit poetical texts.

A new edition, based on new manuscripts, of King Bhoja of Malwa’s eleventh century treatise on Sanskrit poetics, Śṛṅgāraprakāśa. The work is a mine of quotations, including from lost Sanskrit and Prakit poetry, as well as a theoretical treatment of erotic sentiment.

Containing three representative repertoires and over 250 texts, this bilingual (Nepali and English) volume includes both publicly chanted recitals and privately whispered spells of Western Nepal’s three leading shamans, annotated with extensive notes.

The Caitanya Caritamrta is an early-seventeenth-century Bengali and Sanskrit biography of the great saint and Vaisnava leader Caitanya (1486–1533 CE) by the poet and scholar Krsnadasa, who has been given by Bengali tradition the title Kaviraja—“Prince of Poets.”

The Samaveda contains the earliest tradition of music from India. It presents largely Rigvedic textual material in a form arranged for singing in the solemn Srauta ritual. Since the first editions by Theodor Benfey (1848) and Satyavrata Samasrami (1874-1899), there has been no complete, accented edition that also included all its important commentaries. The present edition is based on manuscripts collected from all over India and Europe. B. R. Sharma, Dean of Samaveda Studies, presents the accented text, its Padapatha, and the commentaries of Madhava, Bharata-Svamin, and Sayana in three volumes totaling 2,500 pages.

The Sāmaveda contains the earliest tradition of music from India. It presents largely Rigvedic textual material in a form arranged for singing in the solemn Srauta ritual. This edition is based on manuscripts collected from all over India and Europe. B. R. Sharma presents the accented text, its Padapāṭha, and commentaries.

The Yogaśāstra and its voluminous auto-commentary, the Svopajnavrtti, is the most comprehensive treatise on Śvetāmbara Jainism. It was instrumental in the survival and growth of Jainism in India as well as in the spreading of Sanskrit culture within Jain circles. The present translation is the first of its kind in a Western language.

This is a critical edition of the Kramapatha and Jatapatha forms of recitational permutations of several sections of the Saunakiya Atharvaveda available in six rare manuscripts found in Pune, India. Such recitational variations for the Atharvaveda are no longer available in the surviving oral tradition in India, and hence the texts, critically edited here, provide rare access to these materials.

This book presents the earliest South Indian inscriptions (ca. second century B.C. to sixth century A.D.), written in Tamil in local derivations of the Ashokan Brahmi script. They are the earliest known Dravidian documents available and show some overlap with the early Cera and Pandya dynasties. The work includes texts, transliteration, translation, detailed commentary, inscriptional glossary, and indexes.

The Rig Veda is the oldest Indian and one of the oldest Indo-European texts. It has been translated in scholarly fashion only once during the twentieth century, and that was into German in 1951 by K. F. Geldner. Geldner’s volumes have long been out of print; they are reprinted here in one useful reference volume.

This study and edition of Bcom Idan ral gri’s (1227–1305) Bstan pa rgyas pa rgyan gyi nyi ’od was likely composed in the late 13th century. It is a systematic list of Sutras, Tantras, Shastras, and related genres translated primarily from Sanskrit and other Indic languages, holding a vital place in the history of Buddhist literature.

Dating to the first half of the first millennium BCE, the Katha Aranyaka is a ritualistic and speculative text that deals with a dangerous Vedic ritual that provides its sponsor with a new body after death. In a new critical edition, Michael Witzel presents this work which transitions the Vedic ritual into the philosophy of the Upanishads.

After one hundred years, the well-known Vedic Concordance of Maurice Bloomfield has finally been updated. The first edition, published in 1906, was a complete alphabetic index of all Vedic mantras then known. Several important texts belonging to the oldest stratum of Indian literature have been published since and are included in this new edition.

The poem was composed by the greatest modern writer in Newari language, Hrdaya (1906–1982), while he was imprisoned by the autocratic strongly pro-Hindu Rana regime that governed Nepal from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. In nineteen long cantos, the Sugata Saurabha tells of the life of the Buddha, following the traditional accounts, but situates it in the strongly local context of Newar and Nepali Buddhism.

This volume is a bilingual collection of shaman oral texts from the Bhuji Valley of Western Nepal, in the original Nepali and with line-by-line English translation. Accompanying the book is a DVD of audio recordings of the texts, supplementary texts, videos of shaman performances, and additional video and photographic documentation.

The more than two dozen Rai languages in eastern Nepal, which make up the larger part of the Kiranti language family, are linguistically highly varied. This volume for the first time brings together different variants of myths from various Rai languages, presenting them with linguistic glossings in interlinear translations.

Bhāviveka (ca. 500–560 CE) lived at a time of unusual creativity and ferment in the history of Indian Buddhist philosophy. Bhāviveka’s “Verses on the Heart of the Middle Way” (Madhyamakahrdayakārikā) with their commentary, known as “The Flame of Reason” (Tarkajvālā), give a unique and authoritative account of the intellectual differences that stirred the Buddhist community in this creative period.

This book examines the revolution in Sanskrit poetics initiated by the ninth-century Kashmiri Anandavardhana. Anandavardhana replaced the formalist aesthetic of earlier poeticians with one stressing the unifunctionality of literary texts, arguing that all components of a work should subserve the communication of a single emotional mood (rasa).

This volume discusses the Bhaikṣukī manuscript of the Candrālaṃkāra, a twelfth century commentary based on the Cāndravyākaraṇa, Candragomin’s seminal Buddhist grammar of Sanskrit. The detailed study of this codex unicus is accompanied by a facsimile edition and extensive tables of the script, a long-felt desideratum in the field of palaeography.

The Law Code of Viṣṇu is one of the latest of the ancient Indian legal texts composed around the seventh century CE in Kashmir. This volume contains a critical edition of the Sanskrit text based on fifteen manuscripts, an annotated English translation, and an introduction evaluating its textual history.

This book interprets the ethnography of the Mru and Khumi, Tibeto-Burmese speaking horticulturalists who practice swidden agriculture in the hills straddling Bangladesh, India, and Burma. Their material and spiritual cultures are described in detail here, from dwellings to religious rituals. Nearly a hundred color photographs provide illustration.

The fourth-century Sanskrit treatise Yogācārabhūmi is the largest Indian text on Buddhist meditation. In The Foundation for Yoga Practitioners, leading Buddhist scholars from across the globe offer a critical summary of the work, elaborate on its compositional background, and reveal its reception history in India, China, and Tibet.

Arte da Lingua Malabar, a sixteenth-century grammar of Tamil written in Portuguese by a Jesuit missionary, reflects the first linguistic contact between India and the West. This English translation by Jeanne Hein and V. S. Rajam also includes analysis of the grammar and a description of the political context in which it was written.

Brahmanical Theories of the Gift constitutes the first critical edition and translation into any modern language of a dānanibandha, a classical Hindu legal digest devoted to the culturally and religiously important topic of gifting. David Brick has included an extensive historical introduction to the text and its subject matter.

The Madhyamakahrdayakārikā along with its auto-commentary, the Tarkajvālā, is the earliest work to examine Śrāvaka, Yogācāra, Sāmkhya, Vaiśesika, Vedānta, and Mīmāmsā in detail. Olle Qvarnström provides a critical edition and English translation of the Sāmkhya and Vedānta chapters of this treatise and a historical introduction.

Tarun Chhabra offers detailed ethnographic descriptions of multiple aspects of the culture of the Todas, the oldest inhabitants of the Nilgiri Hills of South India. Chhabra’s prologue details his journey to becoming a Toda “insider.” The text and appendices include significant new data, and the book represents a major breakthrough in Toda studies.

Prasun is a non-literary, unwritten language spoken in the Prasun Valley that varies from village to village. The texts in this volume were collected in 1956 and 1970. Included are all the texts collected, a German translation, a glossary, lists of numbers, place and personal names, the Prasun calendar system, and a brief Introduction in English.

Jonathan A. Silk provides the most comprehensive philological accounting of this fundamental work of Indian Buddhist philosopher Vasubandhu. The edition and translation of the Sanskrit text includes core verses and author commentary based directly on manuscript evidence, accompanied by texts from the Tibetan Tanjurs and a manuscript from Dunhuang.

Maho Iuchi presents the first known work devoted solely to Rwa sgreng monastery, the mother monastery of the Bka’ gdams school founded by ’Brom ston Rgyal ba’i ’byung gnas in 1057. This illuminates the history of Rwa sgreng monastery and the early Bka’ gdams school—and more broadly, important aspects of Tibetan history.

Into Sūr’s Ocean picks up many threads from Sur’s Ocean, a volume in the Murty Classical Library of India, translated by John Stratton Hawley. In this book, Hawley provides a substantial introduction to Surdas, the great sixteenth century Hindi poet; an overview of editions; an analysis of the translation; and commentary on 433 poems.

Georg Buddruss collected source texts in the Prasun Valley in 1956 and 1970, in several dialectal varieties. The present volume is the outcome of extensive work on this text corpus, and represents a major contribution to studies of Nuristani and other languages of the Hindukush-Karakoram region.

Long lost, the manuscript of this significant text has been recovered in the Société Asiatique in Paris and is now published here. Lokaprakāśa by Kṣemendra with the Commentary of Sahaja Bhaṭṭa fills a large gap in our knowledge of private life and public administration in medieval India and will greatly interest Sanskritists and historians.

The Nepalese Gurung recitations known as pe form a diverse group of oral narratives performed by a medicine man or shaman to promote health and prosperity. This two-volume set includes an analytical introduction, 13,000 lines of annotated transcriptions for 92 pe, color plate illustrations, and field recordings on an accompanying DVD.

The Nepalese Gurung recitations known as pe form a diverse group of oral narratives performed by a medicine man or shaman to promote health and prosperity. This two-volume set includes an analytical introduction, 13,000 lines of annotated transcriptions for 92 pe, color plate illustrations, and field recordings on an accompanying DVD.

The Raute and Rawat people of the central Himalayan region live by hunting, gathering, and trading wooden carvings. A Comparative Dictionary of Raute and Rawat provides a useful reference work with new information about the speakers’ ethnic identities and culturally significant plants, animals, deities, and material culture.

Arthur McKeown examines newly revealed Tibetan and Chinese biographies of Śāriputra and a collection of historical documents in Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Chinese. These sources point to a fundamental reconsideration of later Indian Buddhism, its relationship with Brahmanism and Islam, and its enduring importance throughout Asia.

Long lost, the manuscript of this significant text has been recovered in the Société Asiatique in Paris and is now published here. Lokaprakāśa by Kṣemendra with the Commentary of Sahaja Bhaṭṭa fills a large gap in our knowledge of private life and public administration in medieval India.

The Vaikhānasas are mentioned in many Vedic texts, yet they are Vaiṣṇavas, monotheistic worshipers of Viṣṇu. Thus, they bridge two key ages in the history of South Asian religion. This text contains many quotations from ancient Vedic literature as well as architectural and iconographical data of the later first millennium CE.

This volume offers insights into the history of the Veda, the earliest texts of South Asia, and their underlying oral transmission. In side-by-side facsimiles, Witzel and Wu present the two oldest known Veda manuscripts, recently found in western Tibet: the Vājasaneyi Saṃhitā of the White Yajurveda and its contemporaneous sister text, a Vājasaneyi Padapāṭha.

The traditions of oral ritual speech in the Himalayas have a lively existence alongside the written “great” traditions that predominate. But the oral traditions are still little known and even less understood. This collection of oral texts from Nepal, Bhutan, and northeast India is rich with translation and editorial interpretation.

The Veda in Kashmir presents a detailed history and the current state of Veda tradition in Kashmir. Included in this two-volume set is a DVD that contains additional texts, rituals, sound recordings, and films taken in 1973 and 1979.

Utpaladeva on the Power of Action provides the first critical edition, annotated translation, and study of one of the chapters of the Recognition of the Lord, a landmark in the history of nondual Śaivism by Utpaladeva, that were recently recovered from marginal annotations in manuscripts of other commentaries on Utpaladeva’s treatise.

The pre-Gaṅgeśa Navya-Nyāya treatise Upādhidarpaṇa (UD) deals with the upādhi, a key concept in the Navya-Nyāya theory of inference. This volume is the first published edition and translation of the only manuscript of the UD. Notes have been added to elucidate the historical context of the authors, works, and philosophical doctrines in the UD.

The Fifth Prapāṭhaka of the Vādhūla Śrautasūtra includes a critical edition, followed by a translation and a commentary, of the fifth chapter (prapāṭhaka) of the Vādhūla śrautasūtra. This chapter is dedicated to the description of the so-called “independent” animal sacrifice (nirūḍhapaśubandha) in Vedic ritual.

The Rājyābhiṣeka Manual for the Coronation of King Bīrendra of Nepal (1975) contains the only extensive coronation manual available for a Hindu king. Long regarded as highly secret, it can now be presented, after the abolition of the monarchy in its entirety in 2008. This manual was checked and signed by the royal priests and religious advisors.