Camatkara Nighantu

Description

Camatkara Nighantu I am happy to present this small interesting book Camatkaranighantu (CN) I printed one verse from it in New Year Greetings long back and seeing that many of my friends and scholars enquired about it. Then I published it in Telugu script in a Telugu journal Indian Medicine Vol.38 No.12. March 1988. I collected some material on different words mentioned in it but it remained incomplete due to my transfer from Hyderabad. After my retirement and settling down at Hyderabad. I took up the work of its publication. Meanwhile I found that Dr.VN. Joshi and Vd. P. Rammanohar from Koppa published it. They kindly sent a copy of it to me on my request. It contains only 13 verses but some glossaries and appendices for the drugs and their equivalents in Telugu and Sanskrit and botanical names are added. I asked Dr. Joshi for a Xerox copy of the original manuscript with them for comparison and study but I could not get it. I have, however, given the variants from published book in the footnotes. I acquired another copy from Dr. L. Krishnamurthy, son of Loka Sitaramayya.

The advantage of the Koppa copy is that it contains colophon, which gives the name of the author as Raghavacarya of Bharadvaja gotra and sudarśana family. The editors of Koppa CN have elaborately discussed about the format of CN. The purpose of this nighantu is mainly threefold Helps to recollect different meanings of the same word nanarthas Different names of the same drug are known.3. Words that sound alike in pronunciation with difference of only one or two letters or even long and short vowels are identified and noticed along with their meaning.

The editors of KCN stated that the 13 verses contain around 175 Sanskrit names representing approximately 225 drug identities mainly of plant origin correlated to 165 Telugu names. The total number of names in this book of 25 verses is 450. I pay my respects to revered guruji Prof. P.V. Sharma for the affection shown on me by writing the Foreword at short notice in spite of his old age.