A Sanskrit reader : text and vocabulary and notes. (Lanman’s copy)

Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 1920. Seventh issue. Large octavo (260 x 180 mm), publisher’s gilt-lettered black cloth over boards; front free-endpaper with the dated ownership wet stamp of ‘Charles R. Lanman, 9 Farrar Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts OCT 3 1921’ and fully contemporary inscription in ink: ‘C. R. Lanman’s copy / for use in Widener A’; pp. xx, [2], folding inset with tipped-in typed note (by Lanman?) re. its correct use, 405, 16 (publisher’s ads.); the front endpaper has a chipped fore-edge and a discreet repair to verso, otherwise a fine copy in every respect; a wonderful find for the devoted Sanskritist.

The great American Sanskrit scholar Charles Rockwell Lanman (1850-1941) was appointed the first head of Indo-Iranian Languages at Harvard in 1880, and taught there until his retirement in 1926. (The department was re-named the Department of Indic Philology in 1902; much later on it would become known as the Department Sanskrit and Indian Studies).

The fact that Lanman’s Sanskrit reader is still in print (and still published by Harvard University Press) is testament to its usefulness as a textbook – a legacy of Lanman’s rigorous scholarship and carefully considered methodology.