132 Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. [May, 



" Kev. Mr. Long will not object to go out occasionally for the purpose 

 of examining native libraries, and I am willing to devote a portion of 

 my leisure to it, if required. By the new rules lately passed by 

 Government, the Wards' Institution will be in a manner closed for 

 three weeks during the Dusserah, for a month in mid-winter, and 

 for three weeks or a month in May, and, on such occasions, it would 

 be a source of satisfaction to me to proceed to the interior and examine 

 old MSS. 



"It is not necessary now to consider the details of working out the 

 scheme, but as the Government letter contains a blank form according 

 to which the catalogues are to be printed, I deem it necessary to observe 

 that to make the returns really useful, it is desirable to add to the 

 form two more columns, one to contain the salutation in verse (after 

 the usual Ganesdya narndh which should be omitted) and the first line, 

 and the other the last line and the colophon of every MS. Without 

 these, the difficulty arising from the fanciful character of the names 

 of Sanskrit books, which has been so pointedly noticed by Mr. Stokes, 

 cannot be obviated. At first sight, it may appear that the 4th column, 

 giving the " subject matter and name of author," would suffice to 

 remove it, but in many cases such information will prove unavail- 

 ing. For instance, the characters of portions of the Sanhitas or the 

 Brahmanas of the four Vedas, cannot easily be so tabulated as to give 

 the most distant idea of what they really are. I once got four MSS., 

 named " Brahmanas," and unmistakeably bearing the character of brah- 

 mana compositions, which the Pandita, a reciter of the Sama Veda, 

 assured me were portions of the Sama Veda, but which, on examina- 

 tion, proved to be chapters of the White Yajur Veda. Unfortunately 

 the discovery was not made until after I had noticed the works in my 

 Introduction to the Clihandogya Upanishad as portions of the Sama 

 Veda, when Dr. Weber found, from the initial lines published by me, 

 that they corresponded with portions of a work edited by hini.* 



* As a remarkable instance in point I may note that in a Catalogue of 

 Vedic MSS. in the Library of the Sanskrit College at Benares, published m the 

 last No. of the Pundit, I find a MS. (No. 1) described as Yajur Veda Sauhitd 

 without any information as to whether it is one of the two known Sanhitas of 

 the Yajus, the Taittiriya of the Black Yajus, or the Vajasaneyi of the White 

 Yajus, or a new work. A Rvj -brdhmana also, in the same way, occurs in it as 

 distinct from the Aitareya and the Kaushitalci, though no other Brahmana of the 

 Rig is known to be extant. Initial lines in such cases would afford great help 

 to scholars. 



