176 OUfuary Notice. [June, 



of India a subject on wbich he was one of the first authorities. 

 For Sir R. West's Digest of Hindu Law he wrote the Introdactiou 

 dealing with the history of Srnrti. Of the ancient Law-books written 

 in prose, which preceded the later standard codifications of Manu and 

 Yajnavalkya, the Dharma-qastra of Apastamba was first made known by 

 him; this and the corresponding Law-books of Gautama, Baudhayana 

 and Vasistha were translated by him, and his translation of Manu, 

 published in the same series, the Sacred Books of the East, is a work 

 of far more than literary merits to Indian Lawyers. 



Here as in all his other publications he showed that admirable 

 combination of a thoroughly philological knowledge of the subject with 

 a practical knowledge of modern India and its people, that gave him 

 such a great advantage over many of his European colleagues who have 

 only to resort to their books, and never come in connection with the 

 country and its inhabitants. 



The next subject taken up by him, was the history and literature 

 of the Jainas. Dr. Hoernle in his Presidential Address has newly 

 given us an admirable survey of the work done in this long neglected 

 branch of Indian Antiquities, and he has already pointed to the large 

 amount of advancement in knowledge in this field of research which we 

 owe to the late Professor. His work here is partly connected with the 

 decipherment of the ancient Jaina Inscriptions from Mathura, and this 

 brings me to that particular branch of investigation where, as has been 

 observed. Prof. Biihler has done more than any other living Sanskritist 

 of his time. I refer to Inscriptions and History. It will be known to 

 most of us, that Prof. Biihler's readings of the A9oka Inscriptions are 

 far superior to any previous endeavours to read and translate those 

 curious ancient documents. He was the first to adhere strictly to the 

 principle that the texts should be explained as they stand, without 

 allowing any arbitrary alterations of modern critics, and scarcely any 

 other scholar commanded over sach a wide knowledge of the* ancient 

 literature of Hindus, Jainas or Bauddhas as he did, or knew to utilize 

 even out of the way scraps of information so masterly as he. As a 

 result of all his investigations in the wide field of Indian Inscriptions he 

 published lately his Indian Palaeography, that admirable survey of the 

 history of writing in India that makes it now so easy even to outsiders 

 to gain an oversight over the result of various learned researches dis- 

 persed hitherto in different often hardly accessible Periodicals. 



This work together with Prof. Jolly's book on Indian Law and 

 Custom, we»-e the first specimens to appear of the famous Encyclopedia 

 of Indo- Aryan Research which Triibner started under the superinten- 

 dence of the late Professor. He himself was going to publish in the 



