GG6 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 



facturing company were conducted as unsystematically and wastefully 

 as are many of the most laudable undertakings of philological science, 

 such a railway or company would be speedily overwhelmed by bank- 

 ruptcy. The Director of the Astronomical Observatory of Harvard 

 College, Professor Edward C. Pickering, has recently called the 

 attention of his colleagues far and wide 2 to the tremendous gains 

 in the progress of that science which would be made possible by the 

 organization of a central bureau through which the useless duplication 

 of observations and of researches might be avoided and comprehensive 

 plans be made and laid before the numerous eager workers whose labors 

 are now more or less misdirected and wasted. 



Organization as applied to Oriental studies. — No sane scholar will 

 for a moment underrate the value of individualism and of individual 

 initiative. But the question remains, How may those invaluable factors 

 in the advancement of knowledge best be brought into well-directed 

 and harmoniously organized activity and so most fully utilized ? An 

 Oriental Society, even the strongest, is not strong enough for this 

 task ; nor even an International Congress, of which the meetings, albeit 

 frequent, are always too preoccupied and hurried. The most helpful 

 agency would seem to be the Union of the great National Academies. 

 But the undertakings (such as an edition of the Maha-bharata) with 

 which that Union can as yet concern itself are limited in number and 

 of large scope. Accordingly, it behooves us, meantime, to make as 

 much, use as possible of the Journals of the Societies in the task of 

 urging scholars to unite in a common method touching this and that 

 and the other matter of common interest. 



Need of a new Pali dictionary. — This is a need most keenly felt by 

 all students of Southern Buddhism. The admirable work of Childers 

 was completed in 1875. It is very hard to get, for the unsold remain- 

 der of the edition of the first half of the work was destroyed in a con- 

 flagration. And it is far behind the times, for, in the generation that 

 has since lapsed, there have been published most of the books of the 

 Tipitaka. Not only do we have European editions of the Vinaya- 

 pitaka from the hand of Oldenberg, and of most of the Sutta-pitaka and 

 Abhidhamma-pitaka from Rhys Davids and his collaborators in the 

 Pali Text Society ; even the East is awaking to the needs of the day, 

 and we have the Bangkok edition, in Siamese letters, of the Vinaya 

 and Abhidhamma entire, and of all of the Sutta-pitaka except the Jataka 

 (already published by Fausboll), the Apadana (a considerable text), 



2 In A Plan for the Endowment of Astronomical Research, No. 2, published 

 by the Observatory, 1904. 



