पृष्ठम्:रामचरितम् - सन्ध्याकरनन्दी.pdf/३

Ramacarita.
By SANDHYAKARA NANDI. Edited by MAHAMAHOPADHÃYA HARAPRASAD SĀSTRĪ, M.A.
Ramacarita text and com-
mentary.
PREFACE.
The manuscript of Ramacarita was acquired by me in 1897. It is a curious
work. It is written throughout in double en tendre. It
is written in imitation of the Raghava-Pāṇḍaviya
Read one way, it gives the connected story of the
Rāmāyaṇa. Read another way, it gives the history of Ramapaladeva of the Pala
dynasty of Bengal. The story of Rāmāyaṇa is known, but the history of Ramapāla is
not known. So it would have been a difficult task to bring out the two meanings
distinctly. But fortunately the MS. contained not only the text of Ramacarita, but a
commentary of the first canto and of 36 verses of the second. The commentary por..
tion of the manuscript then abruptly came to an end. The commentary, as may be
expected, gives fuller account of the reign of Rampala than the text. The other por-
tion of the text is difficult to explain, and I have not attempted to make a com-
mentary of my own. But I have tried, in my introduction, to glean all the historical
information possible by the help of the commentary and the inscriptious of the Pala
dynasty, and other sources of information available to me.
Its author and his family.
The author of the text is Sandhyakara Nandi, who composed the work in the reign
of Madanapala Deva, the second son of Ramapala, and the
fourth king from Rāmapāla, for, he ends his work with a
hearty wish for the long life of Madanapala. The author enjoyed exceptional oppor-
tunities of knowing the events of Ramapala's reign and those of his successors, as his
father was the Sandhivigrahika, or the Minister of Peace and War of Rāmapāla, and
lived at Paundra-Vardhana, if not the capital, a suburb of the capital of the Pālas.
When the work was written the events narrated in it were recent and people under-
stood them without difficulty, but the case is quite different now when all memory
of the events is lost. The author was unwilling to publish it, but he often repeated
stray šlokas in assemblies, and so in a short time it became known that he had writ-
ten a book and his friends pressed him to publish it.
The author belonged to a very respectable family of Varendra Brahmanas, who
derived their name from their residence in the Varendra country, i.e., North Bengal,
the scene of the struggles of Ramapala for empire. The residential village
from which Sandhyakara's family derived their cognomen is Nanda, perhaps a contrac-
tion of Nandana. The family is still well known. His grandfather was Pinaka