26 Annual Address, [Feb. 



and Wolff, and controlled by a GoTernment too wise to leave the great 

 national interest of higher education to the chances of private enter- 

 prise, the combination of industry and organization was bound to make 

 itself felt. New centres of authority arose, and we now look to Germany 

 for the latest light in ,the matter of Oriental Scholarship. One of the 

 features of their method was the specialization of research. Some 

 years ago when Professor Garbe visited India, I remember asking 

 him some question about a passage in Manu. He explained the point, 

 but added that the law books were not in his line and that for a really 

 authoritative interpretation one should consult Biihler or Jolly. When 

 people work on these lines can we wonder that our Society has been 

 rather left behind in the domain of scholarship ? 



In the region of science, while the result has been the same, it has 

 come about in rather a different way. When the Founder of the Asiatic 

 Society defined the range of its inquiries as extending to whatever is 

 performed by man or produced by nature, his words corresponded to the 

 facts. We were then the sole organ of research in Asia. Whatever 

 was done in Geology, Meteorology, Zoology, Botany was done at the 

 instance of and through the agency of this Society, and the results of 

 these researches were published in this Journal. Now all these branches of 

 scientific activity have grown and developed on lines of their own. They 

 have blossomed forth into separate departments, and they publish their 

 own memoirs. This is the natural course of evolution. The Society 

 has multiplied by fission, like the *' philoprogenitive sponge" in Professor 

 Daubeny's witty verses, and has given birth at successive epochs to the 

 Geological Survey, the Meteorological Department, the Botanic Survey 

 the Indian Museum and the Linguistic Survey — a flourishing family of 

 which it may well be proud. Looking back at these procreative efforts, 

 can we be surprised that the parent organism is if not exhausted at least 

 somewhat attenuated, and that in compaiison with the portly volumes 

 which its descendants produce (Dr. Grierson's Survey occupies 16 

 quarto volumes) its own publications should have shrunk to rather 

 slender dimensions ? 



What then is there left for us to do? We cannot — I would frankly 

 admit the fact — aspire to rival the Germans in the matter of scholarship, 

 at any rate not at present. It may be that my friends Dr. Ross and 

 Hara Prasad Sastri will succeed in creating traditions of critical ac- 

 curacy on the lines recognised as sound in Europe and will train up a 

 generation of Joneses, Colebrookes and Wilsons. But it will take a long 

 time, for modern scholarship is a hard mistress to serve, and demands an 

 intellectual equipment, a range of knowledge, and a standard of accuracy 

 far beyond the reach of the typical Maulvi or Pandit. Until that ideal 



