60 Dr. R. Rest — Ohituary notice of [APBIL, 



\-¥^., The following gentlemen have expressed a wish to withdraw from 

 the Society : — 



Kumar Dingiidranarayan Raya. 



Babu Qarat Candra Catterji. 



The Secretary reported the death of the following Member : — 

 Dr. R. Rest (Honorary Member). 



The Philological Secretary read the following obituary notice of 

 the death of Dr. R. Rost, an Honoi^ry Member of the Society, 



Our Society has to mourn his loss of one of its most distinguished 

 Honorary members who has recently died very suddenly — Dr. Reinhold 

 Rost, who was till witliin a short time of his death occupied actively 

 in work connected with Oriental language and literature. On the 7th 

 February last, Y)v. Rost was at Canterbury in the performance of 

 duties connected with St. Augustine's College, where he lectured weekly, 

 when death put an end to his labours, and completed a life spent in 

 the service of the languages and litei^ature of tlie East. Reinhold 

 Rost was born seventy-four years ago in a small manufacturing town 

 in the duchy of Saxe-Altenberg. He was the son of a Lutheran 

 minister holding the Office of Archdeacon. He was educated at the 

 University of Jena where he giaduated as Ph. D. in 1847, and almost 

 immediately after taking his degree proceeded to England, where he 

 had been offered a small teaching appointment, at the institution above 

 referred to, as Oriental lecturer. 



In 1864 lie became Secretary to the Royal Asiatic Society, and 

 in 1869 was appointed librarian to the India Office in succession to 

 Dr. Fitz Edward Hall, wldch post he held till 1893, when he was 

 succeeded by the present librarian Mr. Tawney whose name is so 

 honourably known to us all in this Society. " Dr. Kost will long be 

 remembered" says the Acadeviy in its obituary notice, " as the ideal 

 librarian to the India Office. Though primarily a Sanskritist, he had 

 to consider the claims of Arabic and Persian, of Pali, Burmese, and 

 Sinhalese, of Tibetan and Malay, and of countless vernaculars. Of 

 all these languages he had a competent knowledge, and he had further 

 to give his attention to questions relating to archaeology, ethnology, 

 and Indian history. In brief Dr. Rost elected to turn himself into an 

 oriental encyclopoedia which no one ever consulted in vain." 



He was subsequently elected an Honorary Member of the Royal 

 Asiatic Society a distinction reserved by that Society for thirty only 

 of the leading orientalists of the world, and still more recently became 

 Member of the Council. 



