The Mahārāshṭa Purāṇa: An Eighteenth-Century Bengali Historical Text 9780824885892

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THE MAHÂRÂSHTA PTJRÄNA

The Maharashta Purana An Eighteenth-Century Bengali Historical Text translated, annotated, and with an introduction by Edward C. Dimock, Jr., and Pratul Chandra Gupta

Published for The Association for Asian Studies

EAST-WEST CENTER PRESS . HONOLULU

Publication of this study has been made possible by a generous grant to the Association for Asian Studies by the Ford Foundation

COPYRIGHT © 1965, BY EAST-WEST CENTER PRESS HONOLULU, HAWAII L. C. Card: 64-63487

Printed in the United States of America

PREFACE

THE RESEARCH REPRESENTED by this little book was begun in the summer of 1959 by Edward Dimock, and continued during the autumn of 1960 by Edward Dimock and Pratul Chandra Gupta, when both authors were at the University of Chicago. Although of course the authors take full responsibility for the accuracy of their research and translation, they are greatly indebted to various scholars and other individuals for assistance and advice given at various points in the preparation of the manuscript for publication. First and foremost, we should like to extend our thanks to Maureen L. P. Patterson, Bibliographer of the Southern Asian Studies program of the University of Chicago, for part of the Introduction relating to the Maharashtrian background and for her bibliographical help and suggestions in regard to the history of Maharashtra in the eighteenth century; to Professor Sukumar Sen, Khaira Professor of Indian Linguistics and Phonetics at the University of Calcutta, for his help in deciphering and interpreting many obscurities of language in the text itself; and to Professor Daniel H. H. Ingalls of Harvard University, for reading a draft of the book and helping arrange for its publication. Our thanks also go to the Registrar of the University of Calcutta and to Professor Shashibhushan Dasgupta, Professor of Bengali Language and Literature, for making accessible to us the manuscript of the text, which is deposited in the Manuscript Library of the Bengali Department of that University; to Miss Judith Aronson, Administrative Assistant of the South Asian Languages Program of the University of Chicago, and Mrs. Richard B. Martin, for their help in preparing the manuscript for publication; to Mr. Ronald Inden and Mr.

Wayne Kilpatrick, graduate students in Bengali at the University of Chicago, for checking the accuracy of the transcription against the manuscript; to Dr. Ralph W. Nicholas of Michigan State University for the maps, and Miss Mary Carmen Lynn of the University of Chicago for preparation of the indices. Our indebtedness to those scholars to whose published works we have had occasion to refer is recorded in the notes to the Introduction and the text itself. EDWARD C . DIMOCK, JR.

PRATUL CHANDRA GUPTA

Chicago, 1961

Calcutta, 1961

CONTENTS

page

Transliteration and Translation Introduction Facsimile

of original

vii ix

manuscript

The Maharashta Purana:

g

Translation and transliteration with accompanying notes

Appendix I

67

Appendix I I

71

Bibliography

77

Index

79

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