Ajirna Amrit Manjari (English)

Preface
Ajirna Amrit Manjari English

In Ayurvedic literature, the Ajīrņāmṛtamañjarī is a brief treatise, yet it is found to be quoted in several treatises. When more research was conducted on this topic, it came to the fore that four of its editions have been published too. The first edition, titled Ajīrņamañjarī (written by Pt. Duttram Mathur, with commentary) was published at Mathura in the year 1942. This work added several verses on indigestion as prologue to the ancient treatise of the Ajirņāmṛtamañjarī. This confuses a reader to ascertain the original and the added parts. This edition is also laced with some errors pertaining to the content and commentary.

After this, the second edition, titled Ajīrņamañjarī (written by Srimat Pandit Duttram, containing the original text and commentary) was published at ninth number of the Chaukhamba Ayurvigyāna Granthamālā. This contains Dr. Brahmananda Tripathi’s commentary in Hindi. This edition was prepared on the basis of the earlier edition, and continued to contain a number of textual as well as explanatory shortcomings. In the absence of actual information, the commentator considered it having been written by Pandit Duttram Mathur; however, the fact remains that Pandit Duttram Mathur had added some initial verses to the ancient treatise and wrote the commentary.

The third edition of the Ajīrņamañjarī was published as an epilogue to the Nighanțuratnākara, together with translation into the Marathi language. It contains a number of textual errors too and the sequence of verses has been tempered with. Yet another edition was published with translation into the Telugu language. Their basis remains the same old Ajīrņamañjarī, edited and commented by Pandit Duttram.

The present book in your hands is an endeavour to remove this confusion and to publish the purest ancient treatise together with commentary. Under this endeavour, 26 handwritten manuscripts of the Ajīrņāmṛtamañjarī were gathered from different manuscript archives/holders all over India. One of them, procured from Ahmedabad is as old as 350 years.

This edition has been constructed after attentive and careful review of all these handwritten texts. For the convenience of the readers, the original Sanskrit verses, their transcription and commentary in English have been given here. The manuscripts used for refining and editing the text have been listed at Appendix ‘C’. The Appendix part of this book contains ten useful appendices, which are especially helpful in comprehension and research work.

The Writer

Different manuscripts of the Ajīņāmṛtamañjarī contain the writer’s name as Kāśīinātha at some places and Kāśīrāja at others. Of the two, the former is the adequate one. It is owing to the inattentiveness of the copywriters that Kāśīinātha has been changed to Kāśīrāja. The name ‘Kāśīrāja’, given in some manuscripts is confusing as people wont consider him as Kāśīrāja Dhanvantari, but this is not acceptable as it is a work of fancy and contrary to the historical evidence’.

In the history of Ayurveda, the Ajīrņāmṛtamañjarī is considered to be the creation of Kāśīinātha, a sixteenth century scholar. More work is needed to know about the writer. The oldest manuscript of the present work was made available in 1720 Vikrama Samvata. It contains a total of 52 verses, which have been constructed to be sung. The number of verses remains the same in other ancient handwritten manuscripts. The number of verses have gone up when some initial verses were added upon to the original ones in the later handwritten manuscripts. However, we have accepted only the original 52 śloka or verses on the basis of the ancient manuscripts.