Bana's Kadambari is often appointed as a text-book in the Indian Universities, and owing to the peculiar characteristics of its style, the students often find it is a hard task to translate the intricate passages in it, in spite of the help they receive in the class-room from their Professors. Some editors try to satisfy the needs of their readers by issuing voluminous notes, whose very extent, however, frightens away the student; at any rate it becomes a tire-some task to wade through a bulky book for obtaining light on one's own particular difficulty. Moreover, only a literal and complete translation can solve many of the simpler difficulties of the ordinary student as regards the meanings of individual words and constructions of sentences, which the annotator may have passed over as being easy.

The present translation has been prepared at the request of many students who require some such help. The translation, here offered, is complete, without the omission of a single word or phrase; it is as close as the idiom of the language permits; and particular care has been bestowed upon passages involving puns and suggested senses.