72 Babu Rajendralal — Report on Sanskrit MSS. [March, 



Age of MSS. — 18. The oldest palm-leaf manuscript I have seen 

 bears date Sam vat 1189 = A. C. 1L32, and the oldest paper manuscript as 

 aforesaid is Samvat 1367 = A. C. 1310 ; but such records are exceedingly- 

 rare, and the general run is from 150 to 250 years. Among old MSS. 

 taken to Europe, Dr. Weber, in his invaluable catalogue of the Berlin col- 

 lection, notices several codices ranging from 4 to 6 hundred years. Seeing 

 that charta bombycina has lasted in Europe for eight to twelve hundred 

 years, this age for works which claim to be from two thousand to three 

 thousand five hundred years old, is very unsatisfactory ; but the climate 

 of Bengal and the manner of keeping MSS. here, as above described, are 

 highly unfavourable to their preservation for a long time, not to advert to 

 the wholesale destruction of MSS. in large Maths, and richly endowed tem- 

 ples which must have resulted from the ravages of those whose co-religion- 

 ists burnt the Alexandrine library. Indeed it is not remarkable that old 

 MSS. are so rare, but that notwithstanding such potent influences con- 

 stantly at work, there should still exist in the country so many and such old 

 MSS. as have been from time to time met with. A new influence is now 

 at work for the destruction of MSS. The halo of sanctity which formerly 

 surrounded Sanskrit literature is fast fading away ; the ancient Hindu re- 

 ligion is gradually losing its hold on men's minds ; Sanskrit is no longer a 

 paying study ; European literature is rapidly replacing it everywhere ; the 

 venerable old pandits — the repositories of traditional and book knowledge 

 of ages, — whose erudition was the profoundest, to whom no modern scholar, 

 European or Asiatic, can for a moment be compared, and who have hitherto 

 preserved with such unflinching zeal the oldest literary monuments of the 

 Aryan race, are rapidly dying out, and their places are not being supplied 

 by the rising generation. For hundreds who formerly studied Sanskrit we 

 have not scores ; and, there being little demand, very few new MSS. are be- 

 ing prepared to take the place of those which are crumbling down by age. 

 Many works of great literary value and age have already disappeared, and 

 others are in eminent risk, and, unless timely saved, will in half a century 

 more be irreparably lost. 



Accessibility of MSS. — 19. Generally speaking, the heads of Toles 

 are the only persons who have really old and scarce works. They know the 

 value and history of the several works on particular branches of ..Sanskrit 

 learning to which they severally devote their attention, and each tries his 

 utmost to secure copies of all the leading and rare works bearing upon the 

 subject of his study. It also often happens that the son generally 

 takes up the subject in which his father was most proficient, and in some 

 families for many successive generations the same subject has been studied, 

 and the works collected by them are generally very correct and complete. 

 But the worthy professors, deeply learned as they are, are not open to 



