Descriptive Catalogue of the Sanskrit and Other Indian Manuscripts of the Chandra Shum Shere Collection in the Bodleian Library

The Chandra Shum Shere collection of Indian manuscripts is one of the largest and most interesting collections of its kind outside the Indian Subcontinent. Formerly a huge private library belonging to a scholar in Banaras (now Varanasi), it was purchased for Oxford University at the beginning of the last century. It arrived in the Bodleian Library in 1909, making Oxford one of the most important repositories of Indian manuscripts in the world.Until the 1980s the only catalogue of this collection was an unpublished title list, compiled over almost half a century from around 1910 by Bodleian and other University Orientalists. With the more recent advances in Sanskrit scholarship and bibliography the list has been found increasingly in need of correction and expansion.A catalogue of the collection has been published in stages, with the first volume appearing in 1984. This is the fifth volume, covering texts of the philosophical schools generally known as orthodox and of two minor traditions, those of Dattātreya and Gorakṣa.