P.V.Kane's HDS in abridged form

[Mikael Aktor]

The idea of an abridged version of HDhS is of course to make Kane's work more accessible.
Lingat's book (if we are talking about _The Classical Law of India_) is not a systematic
abridgement of HDhS. Only the first part, which is a history of the literature, could be
seen as an abridgement of Kane's vol.1, while the other part only treats a few selected
dharmasastra subjects.

Another help would be to publish a detailed, systematic index to HDhS. Partly, this has
already been done in: Krishan Lal Khera, _Index to History of Dharmasastra by Pandurang
Vaman Kane_, Munshiram Manoharlal, 1997, which, however limits itself to the subject of
purification (big enough!). The first part of the index is thematic while the second is
arranged according to textual source. All in all it comes to 282 pages.

An abridged HDhS would be a help if it is done very systematically (like a one-volume
encyclopedia with references to the complete work for instance). It would have been nice
to see a table of content of Moghe's version.

Best ragards
Mikael
--------------------------

Dr Mikael Aktor, Assistant Professor, PhD
Department of Religious Studies
University of Southern Denmark
Campusvej 55, DK-Odense M
Denmark

Phone: +45 6550 3318
Fax: +45 6593 2375
E-mail: aktor at filos.sdu.dk