Subhasita Ratna Bhandagaram (संक्षिप्त सुभाषितरत्नभाण्डागारम्)

Description

संक्षिप्त सुभाषितरत्नभाण्डागारम् (Subhasita Ratna Bhandagaram) This edition of the Subhasita-ratna-bhanddgdra replaces the seventh, published by the Nirnaya Sagar Press in 1935 and long out of print. During the course of its growth through the first seven editions, the work had already become the largest published and probably the largest known collection of Sanskrit epigrams. Such lyric and gnomic verse is one of the glories of Sanskrit literature. Even the greatest of our poets, in composing a mahakavya, drama, or connected narrative on a classical theme took pains to insert such polished stanzas, each of which is complete in itself as well as independent of its context. A collection such as the present thus serves a much broader purpose than that of a specialized anthology.

In its own way, it is an essence, as it were, of the whole of classical Sanskrit literature; moreover, a considerable proportion of the lines carry a moral or at least a sententious weight of their own which has made them bywords, adages, maxims, with their own translations or equivalents in every modern Indian language that possesses a literature. They are thus an important segment of India’s literary heritage. The whole of this explanation would have seemed trivially obvious in the days of our grandparents. But modern Indian education has reduced Sanskrit, like every other subject, to the dead level of examination study, where the student is tested for his ability in rapid extrusion during the course of a three hour examination paper. This collection will not serve the purpose of such an examination textbook, but is meant to give the reader some idea of the variety of secular thought and emotion transmitted to us by our ancestors.

The words are their own; if the expression and style vary from the most lucid and penetrating to the stilted and mannered superficiality, it is for us to inquire into the reasons, to draw the proper conclusions, which may not always be those the author intended to convey. Certain major changes have been made in this edition. To the original six prakaranas a seventh on miscellaneous topics has been added in the general tradition of classical anthologies.