312 Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. [No. % 



of Professor H. H. Wilson, and to express at the same time the 

 sincere and affectionate regrets with which this Society finds itself 

 deprived of the advice and assistance of its oldest and most distin- 

 guished memher. 



In moving this resolution, the President spoke as follows : — u I 

 need scarcely remind the Meeting that since we last met the mail 

 has brought us the announcement of the death of a very old, indeed 

 our oldest Memher. Horace Hayman Wilson, late Boden Professor 

 at Oxford, died in London on the 18th May at the advanced age of 

 73 after a connexion with our Society of more than half a centurv ; 

 for he joined us immediately on arriving in this country in 1808, a 

 period at which we had only just established ourselves in the building 

 in which we now sit. Colebrooke was then our President, and Hunter 

 had been our Secretary with a short interval from 1798, so that by his 

 succession to Hunter as Secretary, in 1810, Wilson has a title to 

 be ranked among our earliest office-bearers. He filled the Secretary- 

 ship for 22 years ; in fact until his retirement from India in 1833 ; 

 and during this long period he devoted himself almost exclusively to the 

 study of the Sanscrit classics. His first work was the translation 

 of the Megha Duta, and in 1819 he brought out the first edition of 

 the first Sanscrit and English Dictionary which had been compiled. 

 He then published his Selections from the Hindoo Drama and the 

 catalogue of the Mackenzie MSS., and was, when he left this country, 

 engaged on his analysis of the Purans, four of which he completed 

 before his departure, and the original MSS. of which are all in our 

 Library. These works, however, were by no means all his contribu- 

 tions to Oriental literature. One of the most important papers which 

 has appeared in our Researches was written by him in 1825 ; I allude 

 to his Essay on the Hindoo History of Cashmere, which, with other 

 papers, helps to make Vol. XV. of our Researches the most inter- 

 esting, perhaps, of the series. 



The address which was presented to Wilson by our President, 

 Sir E. Ryan, and his Vice-Presidents, Drs. Mill and Tytler iu 

 December 1832, shows how fully our Society then appreciated the 

 loss which it was about to sustain of his eminent services, while 

 his answer evinced the unabated interest in our Society's proceedings 

 which he was carrying away with him. 





