Jain Stupa and Other Antiquities of Mathura

Author(s): Vincent A Smith
Publisher: Vincent A Smith

Page 10

PREFACE.
ere preparedator of the
cane he left the plates with
adve
THE plates in this volume, excepting the frontispiece, Plate Tre, and the supplementary plates,
I were prepared several years ago under the supervision of Dr. Führer, then Archeological Surveyor and Curator of the Luckyow Provincial Museum. When le quitted the service of Government in the autumn of 1898 he left the plates without word of explanntory text, although it monograph on the Jain remains at Mathuri had been advertised as in an n aeed stage of preparation by him. Sir Antony MacDonnell, G.C.S.I., Lieutenant-Governor of the NorthWestern Provinces and Chief Commissioner of Oull, consultel me as to the best way of utilizing the time series of plates prepared by Dr. Führer. I advised that they should be published with a concise descriptive text, i short introduction, and references to illly previous publications in which the subjects of them had been treated, no attempt being male to discuss the many questious of interest suggested by the plates. My recommendations were accepted, and no one else being available to do the work, I undertook it. Any attempt to discuss at length the linguistic, palicographical, historical, artistic, and other topics connected with the works of art illustrated would have involved prolongeel research, and resulted in a very bulky trentise. The plates and inscriptions have, therefore, been left to speak for themselves with only so much annotation and explanation as seemed indispensable.
In some cases I have been unable to accept its correct the heruling iltixed to the plates by Dr. Fuhrer.
I am indebted in sundry matters of detail to notes prepared by Babu Puran Chandar Mukherji, who visited Mathurd, and to some extent commrel the plates with the originals in the Lucknow Museum. In a fow Citnes he detected cliscrepancies between Dr. Führer's hovlings to the plates and the labels auftixed to the originals in the Museum,
have seen most of the originals from time to time, but otticial duties have prevented me from staying in Lucknow to make a minute examination of the objects described. Unfortunately 10 catalogue of the valuable Archæological collections in the Lateknow Museum oxists. The collection is housed in a dark crypt and very inaulequately displayed.
It is impossible for me to compile a thoroughly satisfactory work from imterials collected by another man and left in an incomplete state. But, notwithstanding its ruluittel und obvious limitations and deficiencies, I believe that this book will be of great interest to Orientalists. In the spelling of Indian words I have followed the system lopted in the "Epigraphin Indica." The transliterations of the inscriptions are given in Roman characters. Yothing would, I think, he gained by the use of Nagarf type.
V. A. SMITH GORAKHPUR:
February 1900.