Puranic Encyclopaedia: A Comprehensive Dictionary with Special Reference to the Epic and Puranic Literature c4.4

c4.4

The desire to compile a Purāṇic Dictionary that should solve many of the day to day problems of the Indian language teacher, took root in me, several years ago, but I could not arrogate to myself the capacity to fulfill this urgent need. I waited for many years, for more competent and better equipped scholars to come forward and produce a work of my dreams. But since no one appeared to quench this thirst, I plunged myself into this vast ocean of Sanskrit literature, and for thirteen years I dived deep into it, studying not only the original texts but also modern works in English, Sanskrit, Malayalam and Hindi. This took me five years, and I spent about twenty thousand rupees on books and travelling for this project. I started the compilation on 1st of January, 1955, and it took me seven years to start preparing the Press copy of my work. The first volume of my ‘Purāṇic Nighaṇṭu’ was released in February 1964 and the remaining four were published after an interval of six months in each case. The second edition of all the five volumes was brought out in May 1967, still under the original title ‘Purāṇic Nighaṇṭu’. However, in the third revised and enlarged edition in one volume published in October, 1971, the name was changed to ‘Purāṇic Encyclopaedia’.