PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION.
As the first edition of this translation is exhausted, the Translator is compelled to infer that some University students have found it a help in preparing for their examinations. In the present edition the text of Pandit l9vara Chandra Vidj^dsdgara has been carefully followed, and the translation is generally based upon his explana- tions. The Translator has endeavoured to give the literal meaning of the Sanskrit without dishing up Hindii ideas so as to make them agreeable to the taste of Europeans. This course has been adopted by Mr. Pickford in his version of the Maha Vira Charita, and triumphantly defended by him in his preface. The present Translator concurs with him in the opinion that it is absurd to expect idiomatic English in a translation of a Sanskrit composition. To borrow his words : " We often find a com- pound word in Sanskrit which cannot bo rendered into English except by a long and intricate sentence with a dependent relative clause for each epithet and allusion. Moreover, the frequent digressions and sudden transi- tions of Sanskrit compositions clearly mark them as alien from the thought and language of modern Europe. The canons which are with perfect fairness applied to modern versions of classical authors, are inadmis- sible with regard to translations from the Sanskrit.*^ We must not be ashamed then if such phrases as the "feet of my father," "the stupefying weapons," and "limbs cool like a lump of snow" move the laughter of English- men unacquainted with Sanskrit :
" Nam risu inepto res ineptior nulla est."
June 1874.
