Pingree David. Census of the exact sciences in Sanskrit: Series A: Volume 5

American Philosophical Society, 1994. — 788 p. — (Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society 213).This, the fifth volume of Series A of CESS, makes its appearance more than a decade after its predecessor. The long delay was due to the need to utilize the computer in its preparation. I was by great good fortune—whether due to benefic stars or to Providence I am unable to determine—rescued from the necessity of attempting the daunting task of mastering the modern language of scholarship by the efforts of a brilliant Graduate Student, Kim Plofker, who transformed my handwritten pages with extraordinary accuracy into the camera-ready copy that is the mater of the bulky volume you are reading. I am extremely grateful for her lengthy toil on this project, and for her making far easier the preparation of the next volume, which will be the last in Series A, and of the subsequent volumes of Series B, which will be devoted to the bibliography of jyotihsastra arranged according to the titles of the books.
Volume five of Series A contains entries on authors whose names begin with the Sanskrit semivowels (y, r, l, and v), on pp. 317-756. This material is preceded by additional abbreviations ofjournals and serials (p. viii), additional bibliography (pp. ix-xxiv), and additional manuscript catalogs (pp. xxv-xxvi), as well as entries supplemental to those in volumes one to four of Series A (pp. 3-317). Clearly the long delay in producing this volume has contributed substantially to its bulk; many new catalogs have been published in this period, and I have been able to investigate many other texts which deserve inclusion in CESS because they contain significant amounts of matter germane to jyotisa. This realization will encourage me not to allow as much time to lapse before the appearance of volume six.
The date after which new material was not entered into the present volume was the Spring of 1992. Not only has everything that came to my notice since then been set aside for the next volume; I have also refrained from entering here most of the manuscripts on dharmasastra in the Candra Shum Shere collection in the Bodleian Library at Oxford and those on jyotisa at the Wellcome Institute in London; my forthcoming catalogs of those two collections will be utilized in compiling volume six. For that volume I will also cease to include the published books of modern Indian astrologers. They have become far too prolific for me to be able to record all of the results of their labors.
I end this introduction with a renewed plea to the readers of CESS to inform me of any errors of fact or omissions that they may notice. My objective is to be as complete and as accurate as possible, and I will greatly appreciate any assistance offered me in attempting to attain that goal.