Description
The Garuda Purana is a Vaishnava Purana and hence can be termed as Sattvika Purana. It is enumerated in all the lists available in the Puranas, though these lists are not very ancient, yet they show the popularity of the Garuda Purana in the Puranic literature. Also the authors of Dharmashastric digests and philoso-phical works quote extensively from the Garuda?Purana, thus it holds a unique place among the Puranas. The present English translation by M. N. Dutt was written and published hundred years before. Shri M.N. Dutt translated into English many Puranas and the Garuda Purana was one of them. It was first published in the year 1908. Then it was reprinted. Now publishing its English translation with Sanskrit Verses. It is a medium size Purana consisting eight thousand verses. According to M.N. Dutt the book comprises three Sanhitas viz the Agastya Sanhita, the Brahaspati Sanhita (Nitisara) and the Dhanvantari Sanhita. Each one of those Samhitas would give it a permanent value, and accord to it an undying fame among the works of practical ethics or Applied medicine. The Agastya Sanhita deals with the formation, crystallisation and distgisestive. Traits of the different precious gems and enumerates the names of the countries from which our fore?fathers used to collect these gems The cutting, polishing, setting and apprecising etc. of several kind of jems and dimond, as they were practised in ancient India, cannot but be interesting to artists and lay men, and the scientific traders unbedded in the highly poetic accounts of these original gems. With the publication of this important Purana alongwith English translation from a rare book by Dr. M.N. Dutt will help the scholars and the devotees as well.