1860.] Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. 313 



At our request he kindly consented to act, as Colebrooke had for 

 some years acted, as our London agent, and it was in this capacity 

 that he so succesfully pleaded our cause with the late Court of Di- 

 rectors and obtained for us the monthly grant which now forms our 

 Oriental Fund. The correspondence which we had with Grovern- 

 ment and with Wilson himself in 1856 is a sufficient proof that he 

 wished still to take a part in our deliberations for appropriating 

 this grant ; and it must be a source of gratification to us now to 

 feel that in bringing out the Persian historical texts which we have 

 lately resolved on undertaking, we shall be working more than we 

 were a few years back in the special direction in which he wished 

 to lead us. 



What Wilson had been to our Society during his stay in this 

 country he has sincc his return to England been to the Royal Asiatic 

 Society which Colebrooke had founded ten years previously. Whether 

 as President or Director, he has been its moving spirit at least on 

 all occasions on which Indian subjects were to be dealt with. Besides 

 his contributions to the transactions and Journal of that Society 

 he found time to bring out a further edition of his Sanscrit Diction- 

 ary, " Ariana Antiqua," a work of the greatest archseological and 

 historical valué, a Grlossary of Indian terms, and a continuation of 

 Mill's History of India up to Lord William Bentick's adminstra- 

 tion. His introduction to the Sanscrit Grrammar is known to every 

 student of the language, and his edition of his oíd fellow-passenger, 

 Moorcroft's Travels in the Himalyan provinces, to every geogra- 

 pher. The last work on which he was engaged was the translation 

 of the " Rig Veda," and his determination himself to eífect its com- 

 pletion is strikingly shown by the way in which 'h^ has anticipated 

 Müller's edition of the Text. Wilson died a few days only before 

 the 37th Anniversary Meeting of the Royal Asiatic Society. He 

 had when vacating the Presidentship of that Society in 1858, 

 and acknowledging the usual resolution of thanks which Mr. Marsh- 

 man had moved, and in which a hope was expressed that he would 

 soon re-occupy his proper post, made a touching allusion to the im- 

 probability of his surviving the interval which must by the Rules of 

 the Society precede his re-election. 



What little I have said does not profess to approach to an ade- 



2 T 



