The aim of the present work is to satisfy, within the compass of a comparatively handy volume, all the practical wants not only of learners of Sanskrit, but also of scholars for purposes of ordinary reading. It is, in the first place, much more copious than other lexicons for Sanskrit students. Excluding all words and meanings that occur in native lexicographers, but are not to be found in actual literature, this lexicon contains nearly double as much material as other Sanskrit works of the same character. This book is, moreover, the only one of its kind that is transliterated. It can thus be used, for example, by comparative philologists not knowing a single letter of the Devanagari alphabet. This is, further, the only similar Sanskrit dictionary that is etymological in any sense, for it gives a derivative analysis of all the words it contains. This feature increases both its usefulness from a linguistic point of view and its practical value to the student, who will always better remember the meaning of a word, the derivation of which is made clear to him. Lastly, this is the only lexicon of its type that indicates, not only with respect to words, but also to their meanings, the literary period to which they belong and the frequency or rarity of their occurrence.
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