व्यवहारमयूख (नीलकण्ठ भट्ट - पश्चिमी भारत की हिन्दू न्याय-संहिता एवं व्यवहार कोष)

PREFACE
The Vyavahāramayūkha of Nīlakaṇṭha is a work of paramount authority
on Hindu Law in Gujerat, the town and island of Bombay and in northern
Konkan. Even where, as in the Maratha country and in the District of Ratnagiri,
the Mitākṣarā is the paramount authority, it occupies a very important, though
a subordinate place. The first English translation of the Vyavahāramayūkha
was published in 1827 by Borradaile. Considering the state of Sanskrit
scholarship among Westerners more than a hundred years ago the translation
was a creditable performance. But, as has been judicially noticed, Borradaile's
translation is in many places infelicitous¹, obscure² or positively wrong³. Be-
sides, Borradaile's method of dividing the translation into chapters, sections
and placita, though convenient to judges and lawyers for purposes of reference,
conveyed to those unacquainted with the Sanskrit language or the original
work the wrong impression that the original was similarly divided. About
fifty years ago the late Rao Saheb V. N. Mandlik brought out a scholarly
translation of the Vyavahāramayūkha, that was a great improvement on
Borradaile's work, both in the accuracy of the translation and the method of its
presentation. That work is not now available in the market. It omitted the
section on ordeals, it did not refer to decided cases and was also inaccurate
in some places, as a reference to the pages indicated in the Index to this tran-
slation will show. In 1924 Mr. J. R. Gharpure of Bombay, the indefatigable
editor of the 'Collection of Hindu Law Texts' brought out a translation of the
Vyavahāramayūkha. In this translation he generally follows the late Rao
Saheb V. N. Mandlik, though here and there improvements are made; but
he does not translate the section of the work on ordeals, nor does he cite even
a considerable body of decisions of the High Courts that have a direct bearing
on the text of the Vyavahāramayūkha.
In the translation here presented, the whole of the Vyavahāramayūkha has
been rendered into English. The text chosen for translation is that contained
in the edition of the Vyavahāramayūkha published by the Bhandarkar Oriental
Research Institute at Poona in 1926. The pages of the text have been in-
dicated at the bottom of the pages of the translation. In this translation,
explanatory notes have been added in order to elucidate the meaning of the
author. References to the pages of the notes in the Poona edition where the
Vyavahāramayūkha has been exhaustively annotated have also been given in
appropriate places for those who want to make a deeper study of the original
and the translation. The Vyavahāramayūkha is written in continuous prose,
except where quotations in verse (which are numerous) are cited from

1. Vide 2 Bom. 388 at p. 421.
2. Vide 14 Bom. 612 at p. 617, 17 Bom. 759 at p. 762.
3. Vide Sitabai v. Vasantrao 3 Bom. L. R. 201 at pp. 205-6.