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PREFACE.
viii so again during the years to come I shall find little leisure for these researches. I have just finished a new edition of the text of the Rig-veda, and I now feel bound to print the last volume of my large edition of the Rig-veda with the commentary of Sâyana. When that is done, the translation of the hymns of the Rig-veda, of which the first volume was published in 1869, will have to be continued, and I see but little chance that, with these tasks before me, I shall be able to devote much time to my favourite study of ancient language, mythology, and religion.
I should gladly have left these Lectures to their ephemeral fate; but as they have been republished in America, and translated in France and Italy, they have become the subject of friendly and unfriendly remarks in several works on Comparative Theology. A German translation also being on the eve of publication, I at last determined to publish them in their original form, and to render them at least as perfect as I could at the present moment. The Lectures, as now printed, contain considerable portions which were written in 1870, but had to be left out in the course of delivery, and therefore also in Fraser's Magazine. I have inserted such corrections and supplementary notes as I had made from time to time in the course of my reading, and a few remarks were added at the last moment, whilst seeing these sheets through the Press.
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