Stories of Indian Saints

This book contains the first published English translation or Mahipati's Bhaktavijaya which consists of forty thousand lines of beautiful Marathi poetry and is rightly regarded as one of the classics of a language spoken by oyer twenty-one million people in present-day India. Who Mahipati was will be found on anotber page and each of bis joint-translators speaks for himself in his own separate Preface. Since one of these joint-authors is no more, and the other is a self-effacing Indian Pandit, our first task in this Foreword is to introduce their work to English readers by indicating some of the limitations under which this work has been prepared. This English translation of one of the great Marathi classics is published under the provisione of the last will and testament of tbe late Dr. Justin E. Abbott who passed away at Summit, New Jersey, United States, on June 19, 1932. Born at Rahuri in the Ahmednagar District on Christmas Day 1853, it was as a loyal son of Maharashtra that he took in hand the translating into English of important sections of the lives and writings of the Poet Saints of Maharashtra. Eight volumes had been published when he died, and tbe ninth volume entited Ramdas we publisbed a year ago. The present work is planned to appear in two volumes.