Viramitrodaya

One of the latest and the largest of the
nibandhas (“collections”), compiled in
the early seventeenth century by the
scholar Mitra Mishra. The nibandhas
were compendia of Hindu lore, in
which the compilers culled references
on a particular theme from the Vedas,
dharma literature, puranas, and other
authoritative religious texts, and then
compiled these excerpts into a single
volume. The Viramitrodaya is a massive
compendium of Hindu lore, each of
whose twenty-two sections is devoted to
a particular aspect of Hindu life, such as
daily practice, worship, gift-giving
(dana), vows, pilgrimage, penances
(prayashchitta), purification, death
rites (antyeshthi samskara), law, and so
forth, finally ending with liberation
(moksha). Aside from citing the relevant
scriptural passages, Mitra Mishra also
provides extensive learned commentary, and his work became an important
source for later legal interpretation, particularly in eastern India.