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** Translator's Introduction
hundred years ago (August 1783) Sir William Jones saw a vision while standing alone on the deck of his vessel en route to India. "It gave me," he says, "inexpressible pleasure to find myself in the midst of so noble an amphitheatre, almost encircled by the vast regions of Asia, which has ever been esteemed the nurse of science, the inventress of delightful and useful arts, the scene of glorious actions, fertile in the productions of human genius, and infinitely diversified in forms of religion and government, in the laws, manners, customs, as well as in the features and complexions of men."
This grand man knew how to make his dream come true, and change his vision into a reality. He startled European scholars by his translation of Shakuntala, “One of the greatest curiosities," as he said in his preface, “that the literature of Asia has yet brought to light” He also translated the laws of Manu, founded the Asiatic Society of Bengal, and achieved marvelous results in the researches of ancient literature of India. Colebrook, H. H. Wilson, and many others followed him, and to-day we have a mass of Sanscrit and Prakrit literature, Hindu, Jain and Buddhist, lying before the European scholars, giving a clue to India's ancient History.
If we are proud of these learned scholars who have disclosed to the Western nations the ancient glory and civilization of India, we cannot help being ashamed of several short-sighted Europeans, and Americans, too, who think that "India has no history worth mentioning until the time of the Mahomedan conquest;" that Indian history is nothing but a dreary record of disunion and subjection," and who on the whole present to the public, India as a conquered country. But the careful student of Indian antiquities and literature is convinced that they present a history of Hindu civilization for thousands of years so full and clear that he who runs may read.”
