412 General Meeting of the Asiatic Society of Paris. [No. 125. 



has been greater than usual, so that it will soon become necessary to 

 increase the size of your periodicals, to meet the activity of the 

 members of the Society. We ought annually to have three volumes of 

 the Journal, and one volume of the Collection of Memoirs, and though 

 the resources of the Society do not admit our doing so at present, we 

 may hope to attain this object hereafter. 



The Committee would have desired to lay before you the first pages 

 of the Voyage of Schulz, but could not command time. You will 

 moreover observe, from the account which is to be given to you of the 

 state of your finances, that the printing of this work, too long time 

 already postponed, does not admit of any further delay. The great 

 expences we defrayed for the printing of the Chronicle of Kashmir and 

 the Geography of Abulfeda, are covered by the kind assistance of M. 

 Villemain, Minister of Public Instruction, and the resources of the 

 current year will allow us to send to the press the Voyage of 

 Schulz. 



The Society has sustained severe losses during the past year, especial- 

 ly among the foreign members. Mr. Gilchrist died on the 8th January 

 at Paris. Born in Scotland in the year 1759, he passed a part of his 

 early life in India, studied afterwards medicine, embarked as ship- 

 surgeon to Bombay, entered there the service of the East India Com- 

 pany, and was transferred to Calcutta. He devoted to the study of 

 the Hindostani, which he acquired with rare perfection, living for some 

 years in a Mahommedan family. His systematic mind suggested to 

 him the idea of forming that dialect into a language, which in Dehli 

 and Lucknow had gained a great elegance as the language of conver- 

 sation and poetry, but which in other parts of India, like the Lingua 

 Franca, fluctuated between the Persian and the provincial dialects of 

 the Hindus. He fixed the Hindostani Grammar, published a very good 

 Dictionary, and translated a number of English works into that tongue, to 

 furnish to its students works in prose, which were entirely wanting in 

 the Hindostani literature, by which he rendered a signal service to 

 the East India Company, giving a common language to their army, 

 and the means of its successful study to their officers. Lord Wellesley 

 made him Professor at the College of Fort William, where he had many 

 pupils to attend upon his instructions. He afterwards retired to Edin- 

 burgh, where he established a bank, and some time later to London to 



