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PREFACE
It is now more than a decade since this volume was begun under
the inspiration and guidance of my friend and teacher, Professor
A. V. Williams Jackson. My original plan was to make available
for students of Sanskrit an English translation of the Süryaśataka
of Mayūra, but as the work progressed the plan was gradually
extended. The finished work includes a translation of all of
Mayura's writings, so far as they are known, a translation of
Bana's Candiśataka, alleged to be a rival poem to the Suryaśataka,
and a collection of all the available material throwing light on the
life of Mayūra.
Soon after beginning my task I discovered that the Suryaśataka
had already been translated into Italian by Dr. Carlo Bernheimer
(Livorno, 1905), but a search of the records failed, and still fails,
to reveal the existence of any English translation before the one
here given. Of the Candiśataka of Bāṇa, and of some of the
stanzas under Mayūra's name in the various Sanskrit anthologies,
I believe it can be said that they are here for the first time pre-
sented in a modern European tongue. Mayura's Mayūrāṣṭaka,
which was first edited by the present writer from a Tübingen
manuscript and published by him, with English translation, in the
Journal of the American Oriental Society for 1911 (vol. 31, p.
343-354), is here reprinted with some slight changes.
The Sanskrit text of all the works translated in the volume is
given in transliteration, for my plan to have the printing done in
Oxford, with devanagari characters for the Sanskrit passages,
was abandoned when war broke out in 1914. In the transliterated
portions of the work, wherever the final vowel of any word is
of the same quality as the initial vowel of the next word, the final
vowel is marked long whether it happens to be so or not, and the
initial vowel is elided. Elision of an initial short vowel is denoted
by a single quotation mark, and elision of an initial long vowel by
vii
It is now more than a decade since this volume was begun under
the inspiration and guidance of my friend and teacher, Professor
A. V. Williams Jackson. My original plan was to make available
for students of Sanskrit an English translation of the Süryaśataka
of Mayūra, but as the work progressed the plan was gradually
extended. The finished work includes a translation of all of
Mayura's writings, so far as they are known, a translation of
Bana's Candiśataka, alleged to be a rival poem to the Suryaśataka,
and a collection of all the available material throwing light on the
life of Mayūra.
Soon after beginning my task I discovered that the Suryaśataka
had already been translated into Italian by Dr. Carlo Bernheimer
(Livorno, 1905), but a search of the records failed, and still fails,
to reveal the existence of any English translation before the one
here given. Of the Candiśataka of Bāṇa, and of some of the
stanzas under Mayūra's name in the various Sanskrit anthologies,
I believe it can be said that they are here for the first time pre-
sented in a modern European tongue. Mayura's Mayūrāṣṭaka,
which was first edited by the present writer from a Tübingen
manuscript and published by him, with English translation, in the
Journal of the American Oriental Society for 1911 (vol. 31, p.
343-354), is here reprinted with some slight changes.
The Sanskrit text of all the works translated in the volume is
given in transliteration, for my plan to have the printing done in
Oxford, with devanagari characters for the Sanskrit passages,
was abandoned when war broke out in 1914. In the transliterated
portions of the work, wherever the final vowel of any word is
of the same quality as the initial vowel of the next word, the final
vowel is marked long whether it happens to be so or not, and the
initial vowel is elided. Elision of an initial short vowel is denoted
by a single quotation mark, and elision of an initial long vowel by
vii