Selections from the advaita-siddhi - 1

[Jaldhar H. Vyas]

On Mon, 9 Aug 1999, Anand V. Hudli wrote:

>  Your best bet is to contact a book seller such as Chetana in India
>  or even Amazon and ask them to order it from the publishers, Parimal
>  Publications, Delhi.

For buying Sanskrit books I go to Butala Emporium (aka Indo-US Books &
Journals) in Jackson Heights, Queens (On 74th Street where all the Indian
shops are.)  They also have smaller shops in Edison and Jersey City, NJ.
There is also a web site at http://www.indousbooks.net but this seems to
focus more on the popular rather than the good stuff.

Wherever you order books from, there is a horrendous markup which is
understandable given they're not exactly high-volume items but annoying
nonetheless.  It is better to get a friend in India to buy them and send
them to you.  Thanks to list member Shri M.M. Sudan, I'll soon be getting
catalogs from some publishers.  Maybe if some of us list members clubbed
together and placed a larger order we could negotiate a better price?

For the financially impaired a resource that musn't be overlooked is the
library.  There are a whole bunch of libraries with "P.L. 480"
collections.  This refers to an agrrement the US and India made just after
Independance.  America had lent India some money and they were unable to
pay it back at that time so it was agreed to make the payment in books
rather than cash.  In New York, the Oriental division of the New York
Public Library (catalog is online at http://catnyp.nypl.org) and Columbia
Universitys' library have huge collections of books in Sanskrit and modern
Indian languages too.  University of Texas at Austin, and Cornell
University are two other places I know of with big collections.  No doubt
there are more.

>  In my opinion, it is best to study a standard book such as D.H.H.
>  Ingalls book "Materials for the study of Navya Nyaya" in English,
>  before tackling the advaita-siddhi.
>

I agree with Anand.  Another is "The Navya Nyaya System of Logic" By Shri
Dineshchandra Guha.  There are other books on Navya Nyaya in English too
but even when they are not full of Sanskrit logical jargon, they are full
of Western logical jargon, so unless you have some familiarity with the
field it can be rough going.

--
Jaldhar H. Vyas <jaldhar at braincells.com>