India - Sanskrit printing Hitopadesa, or Salutary Instruction. In the original Sanscrit

India - Sanskrit printing Hitopadesa, or Salutary Instruction. In the original Sanscrit [Part 2:] Dasa Cumara Charita, abridged by Apayya]. [Part 3:] Three Satacas, or Centuries of Verses, by Bhartri Hari. Serampore: [Serampore Mission Press], 1804 [Sanskrit title-page dated 1803]. 4to (20.5 x 19cm), modern cloth, xv [1] 160 [3], [5] 4-22 [2], [5] 26-111 [5] pp., title-page, part-titles, errata leaves and introduction (pp. xv) in English, remaining text in Sanskrit, spotting to front and rear, first part second errata leaf laid down, ink annotations in Sanskrit to p. 101, a few pencilled annotations elsewhere Qty: (1) Note: Editio princeps, and the first book in Sanskrit printed with Devanagari types, perhaps one of 100 copies, no other copy traced in auction records. A collection of animal fables believed to date from the 12th century CE or earlier, the Hitopadesa was derived partly from the Panchatantra, which was translated into Arabic via Persian to become the fable cycle Kalila wa-Dimna. The Serampore Baptist Mission and its associated press were founded in 1800 by missionary and translator William Carey (1761-1834), who had established himself in Danish-controlled Serampore in response to the ban on missionary activity in the territory of the East India Company. In 1801 he was appointed professor of Sanskrit, Marathi and Bengali at the Company's Fort William College, at whose behest he prepared this edition of the Hitopadesa from six manuscript copies. The introduction is by the pioneering Sanskritist Henry Thomas Colebrooke (1765-1837). A Bengali edition was published by the Press in 1801. Literature: Johanes Hertel (ed.), The Panchatantra (Harvard, 1908), p. xxii; Rosane & Ludo Rocher, The Making of Western Indology: Henry Thomas Colebrooke and the East India Company (2014) p. 73. Provenance: East India Company library (ink-stamps to title-page, first page of the second part, and terminal errata leaf of the third part).