1904.] Annual Address. 27 



has been realised we must content ourselves with tlie useful if inconspi- 

 cuous work that we do now — collecting manuscripts and publishing texts, 

 furnishing the material which European scholars will work up. In this 

 matter we have the great advantage of being on the spot, and any one 

 who will read Pandit Hara Prasad Sastri's report on his operations will 

 see what a large quantity of valuable manuscripts have been saved from 

 destruction or oblivion by his exertions and by the patient enquiries of 

 his travelling subordinates. We hope that the Government will now 

 place us in a position to extend this system to Arabic and Persian 

 Manuscripts, The extension has been suggested and is more than justi- 

 fied by Dr. Ross's discovery in the library of the Calcutta Madrassa of 

 an autograph manuscript history of Gujarat and of the earlier Moghals, 

 which throws a new light upon an important period of Indian history. 

 Where the materials are so scanty, and their value is so often vitiated by 

 the position or predilections of the writer, the search for fresh sources 

 of infoiTnation is a duty which this Society can most properly under- 

 take. 



Another line of possible activity is antiquarian research in which 

 the man on the spot has an obvious advantage over the most laborious 

 student working at a distance. We all of us know how much Mr. 

 Wilson has done to elucidate the obscure and complicated problem of 

 the Topography of Old Fort William and the Black Hole. He has now 

 crowned his labour by producing a scale model of the old Fort which 

 will, I believe, be exhibited next month in the Indian Museum. The 

 model is a work of art in itself, and any one who chooses to study it can 

 go to the actual sites, identify, with tbe help of the tablets erected 

 under His Excellency the Viceroy's orders, the few portions of the ori- 

 ginal buildings that survive, and picture to himself exactly what the 

 old Fort was like, and how it came to pass that 146 people were driven, 

 without knowing where they were going, into the stifling cell, which 

 Hoi well describes as " a cube of 18 feet." 



In connexion with the Fort and the Black Hole Mr. Wilson has not 

 left much for any one who follows in his fotsteps. But there are many 

 localities in and around Calcutta which will repay similar exertions. 

 Take for example the names of the Calcutta streets. I hear that all the 

 Indian names are about to be recast on the Hunterian System, and that 

 the street lamps will soon be embellished with some remarkable trans- 

 formations of well-known names. Before this break is made with the 

 past I trust some learned member of the Society will go into the ques- 

 tion and tell us how the names themselves arose. A great deal of the 

 early history of Calcutta is wrapped up in them and in name such as 

 " Kolutola," which seems to record an ancient settlement of oil-pressers, 



