XXXil Annual Address. {| February, 1908, 
tutes of law or treatises on.medicine or chemistry, of. unique | value 
and importance ; but the results of the last research are suffic iently 
interesting. \ ‘I he Nepal climate, as is well known, is. Specially 
unusual thing in Nepal to come across palm, leaves ‘of the 
12th and 13th centuries which have not yet decayed. - The ae 
has been able to discover, manuscripts of works which establish t 
undoubted antiquity of the Bengali language; he also: oui 
at least one work written in a language which may have cere 

here before Bengali became current. e have also ample indi- 
cation. of the: meee to which Buddhism flourished in Bengal. 
Mention may a made ofan important medical work, Hara- 
mekhala, ocikton 3 in Prakrit with a Sanskrit version ‘attached, and 
it is interesting to note, further, that works have been discovered 
on’ Buddhistic Philosophy representing the counterpart of the 
great. work known as the Bauddhadhikara of Fg eae a yya com- 
posed about the = “e a es pnt f One can obtain a faint 
glimmer of the d persistent strugzle, vthicls must 
have prevailed sbost Sait ‘this between Hinduism and Buddhism 
and which terminated later on in the complete victory of the former 
d absorption of the latter. We must, however, patiently 
wait for further results till the manuscripts have been carefully 
catalogued and their contents examined Meanwhile the grati- 
tude, of Oriental scholars is due to the Maharaja of Nepal for the 
liberality with which he allowed access to the manuscripts, and 
permitted copies to be made. On the Arabic and Persian side, our 
inquiries have been prosecuted vigorously, and libraries unknown 
before. have =o gers in Ahmedabad, Bombay, Hyderabad 
and Madras. I a sured that of the large number of manu- 
scripts collected, some are of considerable antiquity and of: great 
value, including one on jurisprudence, composed b Kamaluddin 
Mohamed in the early part of the 14th century, the only other 
copy of which known to be extant is deposited in the Bodleian 
Library.. It must be noted, however, that the Arabic and Persian 
manuscripts, which have ng hitherto collected with the money 
placed at. our disposal by the Government, have not yet been 
agg Under the nA rot the grant, 0 is incumbent on us 
catalogue the manuscripts, and I do express the hope that 
this work will now be undertaken, so that the treasures, which 
we have collected, may be brought within the reach of scholars 
in all parts of the ‘world. 
_ I trust, gentlemen, that the imperfect account which I have 
given. of the work of the’ Society, during the last twelve months, 
will convince the most captious critic that our members ‘have’ not 
been idle, and that they have made substantial contributions to 
the progress of the researches for the promotion of which the 
Society exists. It is perfectly true that there are no sensational 
discoveries to announce, but with the progress of time, discoveries 
of this description have a tendeney ‘to grow rarer and rarer, and 
we can afford to be content, for the te at niy rate, with wolig 
work done steadily and without osten 
