General Index to Names and Subject Matter

Author(s): M Winternitz
Publisher: Oxford

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INTRODUCTORY NOTE
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easily find them out for himself. There was a time when German scholars scouted the idea of writing or using an Index to learned books. It was thought unworthy of a scholar to look to an Index for reference: he had to read the whole book and all the books on any given subject. But nowadays even German scholars have found out that life is short, and not only art, but in an even greater degree, science is getting very long. It has become impossible to get on without some time-saving machinery. To make this Index supply as far as possible a contrivance of such a kind has been the one and constant aim of the compiler.
Verbal quotations have been given--they are marked as such by the use of italics—from passages that seemed especially characteristic and important. That the Index should also include such verbal quotations, was one of the very first suggestions made by Professor Max Müller.
The compiler of an Index to forty-nine volumes of translations from seven different languages, belonging to as many religions, had to grapple with peculiar difficulties. He had not only to make himself acquainted with the terminologies of the different religions represented in the Sacred Books of the East, but also to take into account the different translations of the same terms by different translators, sometimes also different spellings of the same names in different volumes. I have tried, as far as was practicable, to collect all things belonging together under one heading, but I must apologize for any inconsistencies that will be found, especially under the letter A. There, e.g. 'Ahura-Mazda' and 'Allharmazd are given as two separate articles, while later on in such cases all the passages would have been collected under one heading. While apologizing for such and other inconsistencies (which could only have been avoided if the whole manuscript of the Index had been rewritten and its publication delayed still longer), I hope to have given so many cross-references that these inconsistencies will not be felt as any serious inconvenience.
When I venture to claim for this volume the title of a sort of Manual of the History of Eastern Religions, I hope I may not be misunderstood. Many books on the History and
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