Proceedings of the National Seminar on Living Customs and their Ancient Indian Sources (An Old and Rare Book)

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It is a matter of great pleasure for me to place in the hands of scholars the Proceedings of the National Seminar on "Living Customs and their Ancient Indian Sources" held at M. J. College, Jalgaon from 27th to 29th December. 1990. The Seminar was jointly organised by our Centre and the M. J. College. Jalgaon.

The purpose of the Seminar, as the title suggests, was to study the origin of our living customs and relate them with sufficient ground. There was another purpose behind such an attempt. The scholars were requested to evaluate a particular custom and opine whether such custom is necessary to continue or not. This exercise will reveal us the source of good as well as bad customs. Naturally. the good must continue and the bad must stop. The task becomes easier if the source is known. In short, the aim was to link the present with the past with the sole aim to recommend the continuity of good customs and discontinuity of bad ones.

With this background the participants were requested to present the prevailing customs right from the birth of a person till his death including socio-cultural customs and to trace out their ancient Indian sources. Athough this volume does not claim to present a detailed survey of all the living customs of Indian society, it does contain good samples which will initiate future research. One thing became very clear in the Seminar that such an attempt can be amply rewarded. To our surprise we could see that almost all the living customs which were chosen for discussion had their origin either in the Vedic literature, or in the Dharmasastra or in the Purdinas.

The Seminar, therefore, concluded by recommending to take up such projects region-wise throughout India so that the ultimate picture becomes very clear. The present volume will demonstrate beyond doubt how much our socio-cultural life is linked with ancient Indian literature. The volume also demonstrates how relevant is the study of Sanskrit in present day India. The tradition of Sanskrit has been nourishing Indian socio-cultural life through ages.

I am confident, the scholars will appreciate this volume and will encourage us by taking up further attempts to reveal sources of many other living socio-cultural customs of our society, not covered here.

I am thankful to my colleagues and students Dr. Nirmala Kulkarni, Dr. Ujjwala Panse, Dr. Sanjay Deodikar, Dr. Nirmala Kamat, Dr. Kanchan Mande, Dr. Manik Thakar, Dr. Subhash Dash, Dr. Kashinath Hota, Dr. Yashodhara Kar, Dr. Nalini Chapekar, Shri Ganesh Panda, Madhusuda Mishra, Smt. Sushama Dandekar and Smt. Suvarna Shete for putting very hard labour in seeing the proofs through the Press.