BiblioVault - Books about Annotated Translation

Brahmanical Theories of the Gift: A Critical Edition and Annotated Translation of the Dānakānda of the Krtyakalpataru
David Brick
Harvard University Press

This volume constitutes the first critical edition and translation into any modern language of a dānanibandha, a classical Hindu legal digest devoted to the culturally and religiously important topic of gifting. Specifically, it is a critical edition—based upon all identifiable manuscripts—and complete, annotated translation of the Dānakānda (“Book on Gifting”), the fifth section of the encyclopedic Krtyakalpataru (c. 1114–1154) of Laksmīdhara and the earliest extant dānanibandha. David Brick has included an extensive historical introduction to the text and its subject matter.

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Held's History of Sumbawa: An Annotated Translation
Gerrit Jan Held
Amsterdam University Press, 2017
Library of Congress DS647.S79H4513 2017 | Dewey Decimal 959.865

Sumbawa is a medium-sized island in eastern Indonesia which has a particularly interesting past. In the premodern era it lay on the trade routes that connected the north coasts of the islands of Melaka and Java with the spice-producing areas in Maluku, while Sumbawa itself exported horses, sappan wood, and rice. Its recorded history covers periods of Hindu-Javanese influence, the Southeast Asian Age of Commerce, early Islamisation, and Dutch colonialism. Dutch Indologist Gerrit Jan Held wrote this book in 1955 but died before it could be published; this volume represents its first translation into English, and includes extensive footnotes that set it in context of current research.

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Into God: An Annotated Translation of Saint Bonaventure's Itinerarium Mentis in Deum
Cap. Regis J. Armstrong,OFM
Catholic University of America Press, 2020
Library of Congress BT103.B663I58 2020 | Dewey Decimal 230.2

An annotated translation of Bonaventure’s Itinerarium mentis in Deum presenting both the Latin text side-by-side with a new English translation which attempts to avoid the use of Latin cognates while remaining critically faithful to Bonaventure’s text. Using endnotes to open the text, Regis Armstrong opens each chapter from the perspective of historical theology referring the reader to authors prior to Bonaventure, e.g. Augustine, the Victorines, Philip the Chancellor, Avicenna, as well as first-and-second-generation Franciscan authors. While maintaining Bonaventure’s architectonic approach, Armstrong studies each chapter as Bonaventure does by focusing on its unique character, e.g. by means of cosmology, epistemology, biblical theology, mystical theology. In a same way, the translator attempts to explain his translation of certain cognates into Anglo-Saxon English by citing contemporary linguistic tools, e.g., Brepolis Latin Texts.

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The Law Code of Viṣṇu: A Critical Edition and Annotated Translation of the Vaiṣṇava-Dharmaśāstra
Patrick Olivelle
Harvard University Press

The Law Code of Viṣṇu (Vaiṣṇava-Dharmaśāstra) is one of the latest of the ancient Indian legal texts composed around the seventh century CE in Kashmir. Both because the Vaiṣṇava-Dharmaśāstra is the only Dharmaśāstra that can be geographically located and because it introduces some interesting and new elements into the discussion of Dharmaśāstric topics, this is a document of interest both to scholars of Indian legal literature and to cultural historians of India, especially of Kashmir. The new elements include the first Dharmaśāstric evidence for a wife burning herself at her husband’s cremation and the intrusion of devotional religion (bhakti) into Dharmaśāstras.

This volume contains a critical edition of the Sanskrit text based on fifteen manuscripts, an annotated English translation, and an introduction evaluating its textual history, its connections to previous Dharmaśāstras, its date and provenance, its structure and content, and the use made of it by later medieval writers.

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Salt and State: An Annotated Translation of the Songshi Salt Monopoly Treatise
Cecilia Lee-fang Chien
University of Michigan Press, 2004
Library of Congress HD9213.C42C517 2004 | Dewey Decimal 338.476644095109

Salt and State is an annotated translation of a treatise on salt from Song China. From its inception in the Han dynasty (206 B.C.–220 A.D.), the salt monopoly was a key component in the Chinese government's financial toolkit. Salt, with its highly localized and large-scale production, was an ideal target for bureaucratic management.

In the Song dynasty (960–1279), fiscal pressures on the government had intensified with increased centralization and bureaucratization. A bloated administration and an enormous standing army maintained against incursions by aggressive steppe neighbors placed tremendous strain on Song finances. Developing the salt monopoly seemed a logical and indeed urgent strategy, but each actor in this plan—the emperor, local officials, monopoly administrators, producers, merchants, and consumers—had his own interests to protect and advance. Thus attempts to maximize the effectiveness of the monopoly meant frequent policy swings and led to levels of corruption that would ultimately undo the Song.

Unlike other contemporary sources, the Songshi treatise organizes its subject into an intelligible and detailed narrative, elucidating special terminology, the bureaucracy and its processes, and debates relating to Chinese finance and politics, as well as the salt industry itself. Professor Chien's extensive annotation relies on parallel histories that corroborate and supplement the Songshi account, together providing a comprehensive study of this important institution in China's premodern political economy.

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Utpaladeva on the Power of Action: A First Edition, Annotated Translation and Study of Īśvarapratyabhijñāvivṛti, Chapter 2.1
Isabelle Ratié
Harvard University Press

Utpaladeva on the Power of Action provides the first critical edition, annotated translation, and study of one of the chapters of the Recognition of the Lord, a landmark in the history of nondual Śaivism by the Utpaladeva, that were recently recovered from marginal annotations in manuscripts of other commentaries on Utpaladeva’s treatise.

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