The Smriti-literature, otherwise known as Dharmasastra in Indian context, deals with the duties and the life of human beings living in a society. The Dharmasastras say that men living in a society will abide by some rules and regulations in order to live a peaceful coexistence. These rules and regulations are made by men, who were like Rsis, and who have the far-sightedness to see how an ideal society should be like. In course of time, men follow their mandates and the society unconsciously grew up. Nobody questioned as such why these rules and regulations should be followed. The Indians as a part of their culture follow them. The Dharmasastras are very old. In days of yore, they were a part of Vedic literature. In the Aitareya-Brahmana and others, some sorts of samskaras are mentioned, like puisavana, namakarana etc. Apart from these, it was a part of Srauta-literature of which each srauta literature has, a Dharma-sutra; for example, the Asvalayana srauta-sūtra has an Asvalayana Dharma-sutra as well. There the rules and regulations of men in performing Vedic rites are given and these rules are also applicable to some extent in a society when the Dharma-sastras were composed. The contents of the Dharmasastras are varied. In some of the books of Dharmasastras, they start from the creation of the world from water and then it describes how the sky, moon, stars, mountains, seas, rivers and the vegetable kingdoms were made and then they come ultimately to men.
As a store house of Manuscripts in different languages and scripts the Asiatic Society of Kolkata has been playing a remarkable role since more than two hundred years.
Now the Museum of the Asiatic Society has possessed three types of Collections of Sanskrit Manuscripts, i.e. Government Collection, Indian Museum Collection and Asiatic Society Collection.
The capital letter 'G' is used for the Government Collection of Manuscripts as well as the capital lettera 'I. M.' indicates the Manuscripts of Indian Museum Collection and the capital letters 'S.C.' are used for the Manuscripts of the Asiatic Society Collection. (For more, see Preface, Vol. I).
It should be noted that more than twelve hundred Smrti or Dharmasastra Manuscripts in the Government Collection of the Asiatic Society have been prepared by Mx Haraprasad Sastri and published in the Asiatic Society in 1925 and reprinted in the year 2005. (Vol. III Smrti Manuscripts Nos. G. 1846-3081).
We may also mention that Pt. Narendra Chandra Vedantatirtha compiled more than five hundred Smrti Manuscripts in the Collection of Indian Museum (I.M.) and published in the Asiatic Society in 1969. (Dharmasastra or Smrti Manuscripts Vol. I.)
The present Descriptive Catalogue of Sanskrit Manuscripts contains the subject of Smrti or Dharmasastra texts deposited in the Museum of the Asiatic Society in the name of the Asiatic Society Collection. This is the first time the Descriptive Catalogue of Smrti or Dharmasastra Manuscripts of this Collection is going to be published.
Most of the Manuscripts of this collection are collected from Fort William College. In 1836 when the College was abolished the whole Collection of the Manuscripts came to the Library of the Asiatic Society.
The Manuscripts of this collection are written on country-made paper, in black ink and bound in book form. One palm-leaf Manuscript is also listed in this volume. (Sl.No. 240 Acc. No. 25595).
Side by side there are so many corrupt texts in this catalogue. There are some Manuscripts without authors and chapters, some are incomplete in the beginning or at the end. Some bound forms have more than one MSS having different titles and subjects with one Call No. So in the said cases the Accession Numbers or Run-on Numbers have been separated from every manuscript. The Serial Nos of the MSS are given on the top and Call Nos are given under the Serial Nos. And the Accession Nos are given on the left-side.
In this connection, I would like to mention here some important texts along with their Sl. Nos and Acc. Nos which may be further studied by the future scholars.
Vedas (1289)
Upanishads (480)
Puranas (609)
Ramayana (832)
Mahabharata (330)
Dharmasastras (163)
Goddess (472)
Bhakti (241)
Saints (1285)
Gods (1274)
Shiva (341)
Journal (143)
Fiction (48)
Vedanta (324)
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