616 Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. [July, 



opposite side, the late Mr. J. Bentley, had unhappily adulterated some 

 very valuable and interesting calculations. 



Such, with some articles of less moment, but all deserving perusal, 

 are the contributions of Mr. Colebrooke to the Researches of the Society, 

 of which he was elected Vice-President on the 5th of October, 1803, and 

 President on the 2nd of April 1806, — an office which he continued to fill 

 until his departure to England in 1815. But it would be unpardonable 

 to omit all mention of the works separately published by him while resi- 

 dent here: particularly the Sanskrit Grammar, with its very able critical 

 preface, — the edition of the ancient Sanskrit vocabulary, the Amera Cosha, 

 to the interpretation of which much botanical knowledge is made to con- 

 tribute ; — the very erudite and ingenious work on the Algebra of the Hin- 

 dus, — and the Digest of Hindu Law, a standing monument of the profession- 

 al value of the writer, and of his skill at the same time as a jurist and an 

 oriental scholar. 



Neither would it be pardonable to omit all mention of what has been 

 contributed by Mr. Colebrooke to the same cause since his return to 

 England, where he acted zealously as the Society's agent until age and 

 infirmities compelled him, in 1830, to relinquish the duties of the office to 

 which they elected him. This period is signalized by the erection of the 

 Royal Asiatic Society, to which, as their first President, Mr. Colebrooke 

 delivered his inaugural discourse in March 1823, and of whose transactions 

 his articles may be regarded as the principal ornament. Of these the es- 

 says on the Philosophy of the Hindus in its five principal divisions is un- 

 questionably the most important, relating as they do, to a subject which 

 none who studies the history of the human mind can regard otherwise than 

 with the greatest interest, — and written with an ability, a mingled pro- 

 fundity and clearness, which challenges comparison with the best of his 

 preceding works. A perusal of these five essays — as they were succes- 

 sively published in the two first volumes of the R. A. S. Transactions, or 

 as they are now republished with the best of his earlier essays in the se- 

 lection now presented to our library, — will at once convince every dis- 

 cerning reader of their immeasurable superiority to any thing that had 

 been before published on the same subject." 



Mr. Macnaghten presented in the name of Mr. Wilkinson a second 

 pamphlet by Sooba jee Bapoo in Maratha in reply to the Pandits of Poona, 

 who have defended the Pauranic system of astronomy, in a brochure enti- 

 tled Avirodha prakdsa. 



A letter from Major Low, dated Province Wellesley, 7th July, proffered 

 to the Society, a manuscript description of a political mission to the Siamese 

 in lower Siam, provided that it could be published complete with the six 

 drawings attached. Referred to the Committee of Papers. 



Literary. 



Mr. Wathen invited the Society's notice to a prospectus first made pub- 



I 



