The Chandra Shum Shere Collection, which arrived in Oxford from Varanasi over a century ago, is one of the largest Indian manuscript libraries in the world outside the Subcontinent. Part IV of this descriptive catalogue adds much to our knowledge of the collection as a whole and gives details of nearly 900 manuscripts in the field of Vedic literature, a fine and varied corpus of Sanskrit primary texts and commentaries. There are some indications that the original owner of this collection was a ritualist with interests both in sacrificial practice and in traditional Vedic scholarship. This element of the collection brings the published catalogue records near to the half-way point, and other subject volumes are present in preparation. Catalogue entries give full information of the coverage of the nature and extent of the texts, materials, scripts, scribes, dates and places of writing, and former owners of the manuscripts.

This third volume of the catalogue contains descriptive entries for over five hundred manuscripts of Sanskrit hymnic and devotional poems, running to nearly seven hundred separate compositions in manuscripts running from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. This important genre of classical Indian literature is valuable not only for its intrinsic poetic and aesthetic merits but also as a vital source of information for the history of Indian religion and its numerous traditions and affiliations. The collection includes works of famous devotional poets and philosophers as well as nearly two hundred compositions whose authors are unknown including some for which there are no other known available manuscripts in any other libraries. Professor Aithal is an internationally renowned expert in the field, and his descriptions include details of scribal and palaeographic features; his useful introduction outlines the literary genre and the principles of its classification.