________________
VIIT
PREFACE.
successor of Sir W. Jones and H. T. COLEBROOKE. The just appreciation of his merits, contained in the sketches of his life, character and labours, in the “Annual Report” of the R. Asiat. Soc. for 1860, and in the “Rapport” of the Société Asiatique for the same year, re-echoes but the meed of admiration and gratitude with which every student of Sanskrit acknowledges the obligations he owes to Professor Wilson's works. Many of these however, ranging as they do over a period of nearly half a century, were originally published in periodicals and transactions of oriental Societies not generally accessible, or have otherwise become scarce, while they still are the standard, and in some instances the only, authority on the various topics of which they treat. Every credit, therefore, is due to the publishers of the series of volumes, of which the present is the first instalment, for the spirit and zeal with which they formed, and at once took measures to carry out, the plan of reprinting a selection of his writings. Of the six divisions, in which these are to appear, the one containing Essays and Lectures on subjects connected with the religions of the Hindus, was proposed to come out first, and at the publishers' request the undersigned undertook to carry it through the press. As it was found expedient to adhere in each division, as far as practicable, to the chronological order in which the several essays intended for it were originally published, the commencement was
