Also by this author:

This page clarifies a number of questions raised by readers. Your attention is also invited to: The Tolkienothēca (Llyfrawr, 2019), Part I of which is an “Addendum to Tolkien and Sanskrit.”

Nota Bene: The sources used in this study are, wherever possible, from before World War I, because that was the time that Tolkien began work on The Silmarillion. (S.7) While “Classic” print sources preserve the prejudices of their time like an insect trapped in amber, and challenge social norms in ways that may not align with our current sensibilities, the focus of this study is on how Tolkien understood these topics based on the resources available to him. The historical hindsight that this approach offers allows us to see what we might wish had been done differently or not at all. This perspective helps to keep us from repeating the mistakes of the past.>

• page 33: Balfour (1885) observes that each of the seven planets of Indian myth is assigned a metal. The sun is gold, and the moon is silver, and the word for silver is chandi.^a

• page 140: The translation of Raksha shown as “[the Demon]” in the Kipling quote is is taken directly (sic) from the source, and is not a comment by the present author.

The late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century editions of The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling, who was born in Bombay in 1865, interpreted the name of Mowgli’s wolf mother, Raksha, as demon: “Raksha [the Demon].”^b This reading clearly assumed the name Raksha to be related to rakshasa. The exact same text is still being reprinted in the twenty-first century.^c

Modern scholars, however, hasten to point out that in his Sanskrit-English Dictionary, Monier-Williams^d glosses Raksha as guardian, protector, which is appropriate for Raksha’s role in the story, while rākshasa is glossed as evil being or demon. The memory of reading the [gloss] of “Raksha [the Demon]” as a child would be a lasting one that would likely have kept Tolkien from looking it up, as it did for and the present author.

• Appendix A The Mahábhárata Introduction (p. 156):

This Appendix is reprinted from: The Sacred Books of the East Described and Examined: Hindu Series: Epic Poems And Puranas, volume 3, London and Madras: Christian Literature Society for India, 1898. While this presentation of The Mahábhárata is at odds with modern sensibilities, it represents English thinking at the time in which Tolkien grew up.

• page 164, endnote 1:

Robert Watson Frazer, A Literary History of India, London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1898, p. 215.

Correction: On page 156, the name of the King of Anga is given as Kama. It should read: Karna. This is the correct spelling of the name for this King who is one of the main protagonists of the Hindu epic the Mahābhārata.

• Page 171: add an opening quote mark (“) at the beginning of the quote from Marshman (1842):

“The Hindoo Annals describe two races of kings as having reigned in India from the remotest antiquity; the race of the Sun, and that of the Moon. Ikswakoo, the parent of the Solar race, the son of Munoo, is represented as the first king who moved eastward, and established a kingdom in India. He is supposed to have founded Uyodhya, the modern Oude, which continued for many ages to be the capital of the Solar race. Boodh was the next emigrant, who, marrying Ella, a relative of Ikswakoo, established the Lunar race in India, of which the capital, either in his days or immediately after was Pruyag, the modern Allahabad.”^e