[BILINGUALISM / THE SUCCESSORS OF “CAXTON” OF INDIA / SANSKRIT LEGAL COLLECTION WITH URDU TRANSLATION] याज्ञवल्क्यस्मृति = جاگیّه والکیه سمرت / Yajnavalkyasmrti: Mûla samskrta aura tarjuma Urdû haranka slokakâ jisa ko

YÂJNAVALKYA SMRTI. 

[The Ram & Tej Kumar Presses], [Lakhanaû (Lucknow)], 1934.

Contemporary burgundy half-calf, gilt-lettered title in Urdu on spine with floral tooling; old calf rebacked, most portions of the original backstrip preserved. Contemporary marbled boards; original pinkish front and rear pastedowns. Royal 8vo. (24.5 × 16.5 cm). Bilingual in Sanskrit and Urdu. [2], 200, [2] pp., including a Sanskrit dictionary on the last two pages. Minor spine cracking and extremity chipping; lower edges of calf trimmed. Printed on thin paper, with the final leaf partially restored using period paper. Despite these, overall, a good to very good copy.

An exceedingly rare and seemingly unrecorded lithographed copy of the earliest legal collection of the Dharma tradition, first printed in May 1880 in Lucknow by Nawal Kishore, one of South Asia’s pioneers of lithography, and later reissued in the 20th century by his sons at Kumar Presses. The work was translated into Urdu by Lala Swami Dayal Srivastava, based on the Hindi interpretation from Sanskrit by Pandit Guru Pasar, head of Lahore University College.

The Yâjnavalkya Smrti is one of the key Dharma-related texts of Hinduism, composed in Sanskrit between the 3rd and 5th centuries CE. It belongs to the Dharmashastra tradition and was written after the Manusmriti. Like the Manusmriti and Naradasmriti, it is composed in shloka (poetic meter) style. In this rare bilingual edition, with an Urdu translation, the legal doctrines of the Yâjnavalkya Smrti are organized into three books: Âchâra-kânda (customs), Vyavahâra-kânda (judicial procedure), and Prâyascitta-kânda (crime, punishment, and penance).

ON PUBLISHING HOUSE: Today is the oldest printing and publishing institution in Asia (see Stark), Munshi Nawal Kishore (1836-1895) founded the Nawal Kishore Press at Lucknow in 1858, at the age of 22. He has been called Caxton of India. Munshi Nawal Kishore was the second son of Brahmin Munshi Jamuna Prasad Bhargava, a Zamindar of Aligarh, and was born on 3 January 1836. At the age of six, he was admitted to a local school (maktab) to learn Arabic and Persian. At the age of 10, he was admitted to Agra College, but he never completed his education there. During this time, he developed his interest in journalistic writing and issued a short-lived weekly paper Safeer-e-Agra. He briefly served as an assistant editor and editor of Koh-i-Noor, a magazine of Koh-i-Noor Press owned by Munshi Harsukh Roy.

On 23 November 1858, he founded a printing press known as Munshi Nawal Kishor Press. From 1859, he started publishing the weekly newspaper Avadh Akhbar, also known as Oudh Akhbar.

Munshi Nawal Kishore published more than 5000 books in Arabic, Bengali, Hindi, English, Marathi, Punjabi, Pashto, Persian, Sanskrit, and Urdu during 1858 to 1885. The Ram Kumar Press and Tej Kumar Press, started by his sons, are successors to the Nawal Kishore Press.

As of March 2026, we couldn’t trace any copies in OCLC.