78 



Professor Buhner's Remarks 



pleasant for those who have to use the catalogue, as it gives 

 much trouble to find what one wants. The different copies 

 of the same work instead of being arranged together are 

 scattered in six, seven or more places. Thus in the first vo- 

 lume the MSS. of the Amarakosha are entered at pages 24, 

 109, 110, 111, 140, 243, 244, 245, 393-396, 598, 477. 

 Unquestionably it would have been more rational and practi- 

 cal to have arranged the Sanskrit MSS,, — without taking into 

 account the materials on which, or the characters in w^hich 

 they are written, — according to the branches of literature, to 

 which they belong. In each class the works then ought to 

 have been placed in chronological order, or in the positions 

 assigned to them in the Hindu system of literature. Thus 

 the first heading ought to have been " Vedic literature," sub- 

 divided in the following manner : — A. Bigveda, I, Mantra- 

 sarhhita II, Brahmanas, III, Aranyakas, IV, Upanishads, V, 

 Qixa and Pratigakhya, VII, Chandas VIII, Kalpa, Qrauta 

 Grihya and Dharmasutras, IX, Jyotesha, X. Anukrama- 

 nis and Paricishtas, B. Yajurveda, I, Taittiriya, II, Cukla, 

 C. Samaveda, D. Atharvaveda. Each of the divisions B I, 

 B II, C. and D must be sub-divided just like A, and after each 

 work its commentaries and Paddhatis should be. arranged. 



But one would not quarrel with the reverend gentleman 

 on account of the irrational arrangement of the MSS., if he 

 had only chosen his "subject-matter" divisions properly, 

 and consistently placed the same books in each. Unfortu- 

 nately the confusion becomes perfectly bewildering through 

 his total neglect of these two points. Firstly, we have a 

 heading " Miscellaneous," under which a very large number 

 of fragments and often entire books of the most different 

 branches are jumbled together. This division occupies nearly 

 one-seventh of the whole space allotted to the Sanskrit MSS. 

 in the first volume and one-fourteenth in the second — in all 

 9G pages. Secondly, the same branch of literature is fre- 



