I feel very great pleasure and consider it a veritable privilege to contribute a Foreword to this Volume of the Maha-Subhasita Samgraha, planned and partly compiled by the late Professor Ludwik Sternbach and being so ably edited and presented to the world of the learned by Prof. S. Bhaskaran Nair, Director-Professor of the V. V. R. I., Hoshiarpur. It is a matter of delight for me to be fortunate to witness the fructification of a proposal mooted by the learned Professor Sternbach and discussed with me as far back as September, 1966. He was then in search of a scholar who would translate into English those subhasitas which had not so far been translated into English, edit the Sanskrit text critically and see the work through the press. He had himself found such a scholar in Prof. Bhaskaran Nair. On his way to New York, he communicated his wish to me in his letter dated 24.9. 1966 as follows: "I would greatly appreciate it if he (Mr. Bhaskaran Nair) would be able and willing to undertake the job, since I have full confidence in him and have high esteem for his work."
Needless to say that it was beyond my power to request and persuade the late lamented Acharya Vishva Bandhu Ji to spare Mr. Bhaskaran for this work and six long years passed. On 28th August, 1972, Prof. Sternbach again wrote to the late Acharya Ji that the Maha-Subhașita-Samgraha was for him like a child and he intended to bequeath the whole of his fortune after his and his mother's death to the Institute which will take up the publication of this work. Thus Prof. Sternbach succeeded in persuading the late Acharya Ji to agree to the publication of this great Project by the V. V. R. I. In this way, Prof. Sternbach's ardent wish to entrust the editing and the preparation of the final text and its publication to Prof. S. Bhaskaran Nair was ultimately fulfilled.
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