Hindu Law and Custom (Recht und Sitte) c7.336

c7.336

The imposing Caturvargacintāmaṇi of Hemādri³ belongs to the latter half of the 13. century, more accurately, to the period between 1260 and 1309, whose already far advanced publication in the Bibl. Ind. will, it is hoped, be shortly concluded. Of the five Khaṇḍas, the first or Vratakhaṇḍa, the second or Dānakhaṇḍa and a greater part of the fifth or Pariśeṣakhaṇḍa have hitherto appeared, while the third the and fourth Khaṇḍas i.e. the Tīrtha and the Mokṣakhaṇḍas, are still unpublished. Law proper has not been dealt with in this voluminous work, excepting in some occasional remarks in the section on Śrāddha (524 ff.), but it is a real mine of interesting quotations from the Smṛtis and Purāṇas. Hem. was the minister (mantrin) and secretary or keeper of archives (śrikaraṇādhipa) to two powerful rulers of the Yādava dynasty in Devagiri (Dowlatabad in Haiderabad)—Mahādeva (1260-71) and Rāmacandra (1271-1309). Bhandarkar¹ assigns to about 1230 a Dānavākyāvalī about religious institutions and gifts, which was composed by Vidyāpati at the request of Dhīramati, the wife of the king Narasimhadeva of Mithilā. An old Ms. of this work was copied already in 1483 and moreover the name of king Narasimhadeva occurs in the traditional family trees of the ancient dynasty of Mithilā, in which the well-known Harasimhadeva, whose reign falls in the beginning of the 14. century, is mentioned as his great-grandson.