Operation In Search of Sanskrit Manuscripts in Mumbai Circle 1

Author(s): P Piterson
Publisher: Royal Asiatic Society

Page 85

72 OPERATIONS IN SEARCH OF SANSKRIT MSS. IN THE BOMBAY CIRCLE.
obtained in working out the scheme should be "sent to Europe."* It is now generally understood that the work is not being prosecuted on lines with which no one could reasonably expect a native scholar to sympathise; and we have year by year in greater force the active support of the educated classes throughout the country. The unreasoning prejudice raised on religious grounds is dying more slowly; but in that respect, too, matters are steadily improving. And I need not say that when that last obstacle vanishes, results may confidently be looked for of supreme importance.
In these circumstances it will be readily understood that it is matter of great regret to me personally that, after long waiting, I find myself put in part charge of the work of travelling and purchasing books over a district which comprises nearly a third of the peninsula, with a yearly grant for all expenses of Rs. 2,225.+ I venture respectfully to urge that the sum is altogether inadequate; and to express the hope that arrangements may be possible for restoring the grant to the amount originally sanctioned out of Imperial revenues. I would fain hope, also, that it may be found possible to elicit, in favour of an undertaking that has the support of the most enlightened of the native community, that public spirit in the private citizen which has never been wanting in Bombay. I have in this connection to tender here my best thanks to the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society for permitting this Report to appear as a number of their Journal, and for contributing towards the expense of its publication.
"To Europe we should send everything obtained in working out this scheme, original MSS., copies, extracts; for in Europe alone are the true principles of criticism and philology understood and applied, and, fifty years hence, in Earope alone will any intelligent interest be felt in Sanskrit literature. There will then, it is safe to say, be as few Sanskrit scholars in India as there are now Greek scholars in Greece."-Note by Mr. Whitley Stokes. See Gough's Records of Ancient Sanscrit Literature, p. 5.
Mr. Bhandarkar and I have had the disposal of Rs. 6,500 during the year under report. But that was due to the fact that as yet nothing has had to be paid towards the catalogue scheme.