Description
Popular Book Depot, Published 1961. Hardcover, xii, 277 pp.; 19 cm; Second Impression, August 1961 (first impression February 1956), stated on copyright page; text in English with Marathi and Sanskrit quotations in Devanagari.
Rare, out-of-print & unusual books · Since 1997
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Condition & notes
In Good condition with an Acceptable dust jacket. Cream textured paper-covered boards with an embossed spider-web pattern, lettered in black on spine. Half-inch tear to paper along front hinge, half-inch tear to paper on spine near rear hinge, small tear at head of rear hinge; bumping and creasing to edges and corners; mild to moderate toning to covers, heavier on spine. Binding tight. Former owner's name in ink at head of front free endpaper. Pages toned, with heavy rectangular offsetting to front and rear endpapers where something was long laid in; otherwise unmarked. Illustrated dust jacket (green with a black and cream abstract block design, priced Rs. 7.50) has a half-inch circular chip on spine matching the tear beneath, further chips and tears along edges and flap folds, mild to moderate toning. Now in an archival quality (removable) Brodart cover. The first systematic study in English of the philosophy of Jnanadeva (Dnyaneshwar, 1275-1296), the Marathi poet-saint whose Jnaneshwari, the vernacular commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, founded the Varkari devotional tradition of Maharashtra. Bahirat (b. 1904), a Pandharpur scholar of the Maharashtrian saints and editor of the Marathi monthly Prem-Bodh, builds his account chiefly on the Amritanubhava, Jnanadeva's independent philosophical poem, setting out its theory of Chidvilasa (reality as the play of consciousness) against Shankara's doctrine of avidya, and comparing it with Ramanuja, Madhva, Nimbarka, and Vallabha on the Indian side and Plotinus, Spinoza, and Bradley on the Western. First published by the Pandharpur Research Society in 1956 and reviewed in the Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies; this second edition adds an Appendix with a complete English rendering of the Amritanubhava (pp. 157-252). Reissued by Motilal Banarsidass from 1984 and still in print; the original Bombay printings are scarce. Rear panel prints notices from the BSOAS, the Hindustan Times, and the National Herald. Contents: The Age of Jnanadeva; Life and Works of Jnanadeva; The Amritanubhava and Commentators; Metaphysics, The Nature of Ultimate Reality; Cosmology, The Nature of the World; The Nature of Jiva; Bhakti or God-realization; Influences on the Philosophy of Jnanadeva; Amritanubhava and Other Works of Jnanadeva; Different Interpretations of Jnanadeva's Philosophy, A Critical Survey; Jnanadeva and Some Western Philosophers; Jnanadeva's Place in the History of Indian Philosophy; Appendix, Amritanubhava (An English Rendering); Index; Bibliography.