The Puspasutra is one of the major ancillary works in the Saman technical literature attributed to the Kauthuma and Ranayaniya schools. It deals with the Saman melodies and their structure. The term Puspa, in the present context, means the syllabic expansion that takes place when a melody is formed out of a verse. The Puspasutra was written long after the Saman melodies had been developed. It contains ten Prapathaka. The first two of them give the names of Samans occurring in the Uttaragana (i.e. Uhagana and Uhyagana) in the order in which they occur. The statement of topics given in the 8th Prapathaka of the Puspasutra would indicate the demarcation. The Puspasura has two recensions namely northern and southern. The statement of contents in the 8th Prapathaka agrees exactly with the topics dealt with in the Prapathakas III to VIII of South Indian recension. This is understood to be the original part of the Puspasutra which is genuine. The Northern recension of Puspasutra assigns this text twice to Govila. The Southern recension assigns it once to Vararuci. The present edition prepared by Prof. G.H. Tarlekar who is a living authority on the science of Sama-chanting, contains the accurate text in Sanskrit with English exposition bringing out all the intricate points discussed in the Sutras in a highly technical language. This important text on the Sama-chanting has been exposited in English in this edition for the first time.
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