Introduction

Between 1930 and 1962, the eminent Sanskritist and lawyer Pandurang Vaman Kane (pronounced KAH-nay) produced a five-volume monograph entitled History of Dharmaśāstra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law), published by the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute in Pune, India. This work of over 6,500 pages provides much more than a narrow focus on law or the special genre of Sanskrit literature devoted to religious and legal duties, the Dharmaśāstra. It contains rather something close to an intellectual history of Hinduism, from its origins in the Vedic texts to contemporary debates about the “reform” of Hinduism in nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Kane understood his task as presenting the broadest possible survey of the role legal, religious, and ethical thought in the history of Hinduism, with regular incursions into other religious traditions as well. A modern scholar of Dharmaśāstra, Richard Lariviere, is fond of saying, “We all make our living from Kane’s footnotes.” Indeed, Kane’s work has become a constant source of reference and orientation in South Asian studies of law, religion, ritual, literature, history, and more. It is a work that has perhaps literally launched a thousand dissertations because it is so easy to refer a student or a colleague to the appropriate section of Kane as a way to get their bearings in relation to hundreds of topics in the fields of Hindu studies or Indian social and intellectual history....

ACTA ORIENTALIA VILNENSIA EXCHANGE PROGRAMME

The editors of the Acta Orientalia Vilnensia, in co-operation with the Oriental library at Vilnius University, highly welcome a regular exchange of scholarly periodicals publishing on Asian and Middle Eastern studies. For exchange proposals, please contact the secretary of the editorial board. Journals or serial publications received under the programme in 2012:• Acta Asiatica. Bulletin of the Institute of Eastern Studies• Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute• Archív Orientální• Asian Ethnology• Asian Studies Review• Asiatische Studien/Études Asiatiques• Brahmavidya: The Adyar Library Bulletin• Bulletin of the Deccan College Post-Graduate and Research Institute• Cracow Indological Studies• Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy• East and West• Folia Orientalia• Indologica Taurinensia• Japanese Journal of Religious Studies• Journal of Sukrtindra Oriental Research Institute• Journal of the Asiatic Society of Mumbai• Journal of the International College for Postgraduate Buddhist Studies• Journal of the Oriental Institute, M.S. University of Baroda• Linguistic and Oriental Studies from Poznan• Monumenta Serica. Journal of Oriental Studies• New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies• Orientalia Suecana• Pandanus• Philosophy East and West• Religion East and West• Rocznik Orientalistyczny• Studia Indologiczne• Studia Orientalia• Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Südasiens• ZINBUN

ACTA ORIENTALIA VILNENSIA EXCHANGE PROGRAMME

The editors of the Acta Orientalia Vilnensia, in co-operation with the Oriental library at Vilnius University, highly welcome a regular exchange of scholarly periodicals publishing on Asian and Middle Eastern studies. For exchange proposals, please contact the secretary of the editorial board. Journals or serial publications received under the programme in 2014:• Acta Asiatica. Bulletin of the Institute of Eastern Studies• Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute• Archív Orientální• Asian Ethnology• Asian Studies Review• Asiatische Studien/Études Asiatiques• Brahmavidya: The Adyar Library Bulletin• Bulletin of the Deccan College Post-Graduate and Research Institute• Cracow Indological Studies• Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy• Folia Orientalia• Indologica Taurinensia• Japanese Journal of Religious Studies• Journal of Sukrtindra Oriental Research Institute• Journal of the Asiatic Society of Mumbai• Journal of the International College for Postgraduate Buddhist Studies• Journal of the Oriental Institute, M.S. University of Baroda• Linguistic and Oriental Studies from Poznan• Monumenta Serica. Journal of Oriental Studies• New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies• Pacific World: Journal of the Institute of Buddhist Studies• Pandanus• Philosophy East and West• Religion East and West• Rocznik Orientalistyczny• Studia Indologiczne• Studia Orientalia• Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Südasiens• ZINBUN

ACTA ORIENTALIA VILNENSIA EXCHANGE PROGRAMME

The editors of the Acta Orientalia Vilnensia, in co-operation with the Oriental library at Vilnius University, highly welcome a regular exchange of scholarly periodicals publishing on Asian and Middle Eastern studies. For exchange proposals, please contact the secretary of the editorial board. Journals or serial publications received under the programme in 2012:• Acta Asiatica. Bulletin of the Institute of Eastern Studies• Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute• Archív Orientální• Asian Ethnology• Asian Studies Review• Asiatische Studien/Études Asiatiques• Brahmavidya: The Adyar Library Bulletin• Bulletin of the Deccan College Post-Graduate and Research Institute• Cracow Indological Studies• Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy• East and West• Folia Orientalia• Indologica Taurinensia• Japanese Journal of Religious Studies• Journal of Sukrtindra Oriental Research Institute• Journal of the Asiatic Society of Mumbai• Journal of the International College for Postgraduate Buddhist Studies• Journal of the Oriental Institute, M.S. University of Baroda• Linguistic and Oriental Studies from Poznan• Monumenta Serica. Journal of Oriental Studies• New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies• Orientalia Suecana• Pandanus• Philosophy East and West• Religion East and West• Rocznik Orientalistyczny• Studia Indologiczne• Studia Orientalia• Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Südasiens• ZINBUN

The Yuga Purāṇa: a footnote

In my critical edition of the Yuga Purāṇa chapter of the Gārgīya Jyotiṣa—a text most noted for its mention of the Yavanas and Śakas in India—I mentioned that there were four known manuscripts of the Gārgīya Jyotiṣa which I had been unable to consult at that time. I was recently able to rectify this situation and discovered as a result that two of those manuscripts do indeed contain the Yuga Purāṇa chapter (together with the entire Gārgīya Jyotiṣa) while the other two do not. The first of the complete manuscripts of the work is in the library of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute in Pune, catalogued as No. 345 of 1879–80; I have called this manuscript E, and its readings are very similar to those of manuscript H (currently in BHU, Varanasi). The second is No. 1433 in the Itccharam Suryaram Desai collection of Bombay University Library; this I have called manuscript M, and it is closly linked with manuscript B (in Banaras Sanskrit University), even omitting with B some three lines of the work (71a–d and 72a–b).