Lokaprak&#257;&#347;a by K&#7779;emendra with the Commentary of Sahaja Bha&#7789;&#7789;a, Volume 2
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 2021
Language: eng
Number of pages: 500
ISBN-13: 9780674984363
Subjects: Commercial correspondence
Description: The Lokaprakāśa by well-known Kashmirian author Kṣemendra (fl. 1050 CE) is a unique Sanskrit text that deals with details of public administration, from the king down to the village level. It includes private sale and mortgage documents as well as marriage contracts—documents that are little attested outside medieval Kashmir.In the first decade of the twentieth century, famous explorer and Kashmiri specialist Sir M. Aurel Stein asked his friend, learned Kashmiri Pandit Sahaja Bhaṭṭa, to prepare an edition of this significant text with commentary explaining many otherwise obscure terms. The manuscript was originally projected to be published by Stein and Charles Lanman in the early 1930s, in a facsimile edition. Long lost, the manuscript has been recovered in the Société Asiatique in Paris and is now published here. The text fills a large gap in our knowledge of private life and public administration in medieval India and will greatly interest Sanskritists and historians alike.