General Index to Names and Subject Matter

Author(s): M Winternitz
Publisher: Oxford

Page 10

PREFACE
OXFORD, February, 1910.
branch of learning to which the work in question belongs. Even in recent years I have hardly ever seen an index to Oriental works that has not seemed to me too meagre and consequently inadequate as an instrument of research. Very different is the character of the present substantial volume of 684 pages, which Professor Winternitz has compiled with so much thoroughness and industry. I feel no hesitation in stating that it is the most comprehensive work of the kind that has yet been published. For it is not merely a complete index like vol. xxv of the recently published Imperial Gazetteer of India. It also furnishes, in articles of any length, a scientific classification of the subject under various heads. Thus, in the article on Agni, the Indian god of fire, the material relating to that deity is arranged under no fewer than twenty-four subdivisions. Such fullness of treatment saves the book from the inevitable dryness from which it would otherwise suffer. Indeed, its perusal will, I believe, prove interesting not only to the expert, but even to the general reader. The volume, in fact, constitutes a handbook for the study of Oriental religions as far as represented by the Sacred Books of the East. By saving the student of these volumes an immense amount of time, it will greatly lighten his labours. The methodical arrangement and the co-ordination of the vast and varied material that they contain are also calculated to stimulate both the historical investigation of each, and the comparative study of all, of the religious systems dealt with in the series. Hence if I were asked to select any one of the fifty volumes of the Sacred Books of the East as specially useful, I should certainly choose the last. The Delegates are to be congratulated on rounding off with so valuable an addition a series that reflects so much lustre on the University Press, and has contributed not a little towards establishing its now unrivalled position as a centre of Oriental publication.
A. A. MACDONELL.
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