1898.] Annual Address. 39 



of Natural History Secretary and Anthropological Secretary respec- 

 tively. Mr. C. Little continued our Treasurer for another year with 

 conspicuous zeal. To all these gentlemen I desire to offer my warm 

 acknowledgments for the help afforded me in presiding over the affairs 

 of the Society, and I would also ask you to pass a cordial vote of thanks 

 for their services to the* Society during the past year. 



In thinking over what I should make the subject of my annual 

 address to you, it has occurred to me that perhaps I might be able to 

 say something that would interest you and at the same time not take up 

 too much of your time, if I were to confine myself to those departments 

 of research in which I have been to some extent a worker myself, and 

 to review the period from 1883 up to this j^ear. I have chosen this 

 period, both because it is characterised by special progress in those 

 departments, and because the preceding period of one hundred years 

 was reviewed by me in 1883 in the Centenary Review. The departments 

 I refer to are those of the History and Literature of Jainism and 

 Buddhism, and of Indian Archaeology and Epigraphy. To these I will 

 add some account of the recent Ethnographic and Linguistic Surveys, 

 as well as of the History of Old Calcutta. 



Jainism and Buddhism. — A very great advance, during the 

 period under review, has been made with respect to our knowledge of 

 Jainism. Jainism is the great Indian rival of Buddhism, and is as 

 ancient an institution as the latter, though until quite recent years its 

 very existence before the middle ages was denied by the learned world, 

 and even at the present time, by the side of the world-wide fame of 

 its illustrious rival, it is hardly more than a name to the general public. 

 It owes in the main its rehabilitation as one of the most ancient 

 monastic organizations of India to the researches of Professor Jacobij 

 which were seconded by Hofrath Prof. Biihler, myself, and others. ^ 

 The results of these may be thus summarised. 



The founder of Jainism is commonly known by the title of 

 Mahavira, under which he is usually referred to in the sacred books of 

 the Jains. His personal name, however, was Vardhamana. In the 

 books of the rival Order of the Buddhists, he is designated the 

 Nataputta, i.e., " the son of the chief of the Nata clan of Ksatriyas." 

 For like Buddha, Mahavira was of high aristocratic descent, the son 



1 For detailed information see Prof. Jacobi's Translations of the Acaragga and 

 Kalpa Sutras (1884), and the Uttaradhyayana and Sutrakrtagga Sutras (1895), Prof. 

 Biihler's Indian Sect of the Jains (1887), and my own Translation of the Upasakada^a 

 Sutra (1888) ; also Prof. Jacobi's Kalpa Sutra, published in 1879, and a paper of his 

 on the Origin of the Qvetdmhara and. Digdmhara Sects in the Journal of the German 

 Oriental Society, Vol. XXXVIII, 1884. 



