434 



Miscellanea. 



[Oct, 



fore, in place of any thing better, I transmit the following brief re- 

 marks ; conscious that they are much beneath the importance of the 

 subject. 



As stated elsewhere my attention was first directed to these Manu- 

 scripts by Sir Ralph Palmer, then President of the Madras Literary 

 Society : he promised me an introduction to them ; but as he did not 

 of himself recur to the subject, and as my attention was much engaged 

 on equally valuable manuscripts of my own, I forebore to reiterate the 

 mention of it. Another gentleman, an oriental scholar, whose name 

 I have no permission to make free with, more definitely brought the 

 matter to my notice ; and finding the need of some aid in the more 

 modern portion of my enquiries, I succeeded, by the kind and readily 

 conceded favor of A. D. Campbell, Esq. and J. C. Morris, Esq. in 

 getting full access to those MSS. with permission to read and tran- 

 scribe them. I went to the library of the Literary Society, and extend- 

 ed a cursory inspection to the whole of them ; setting aside for more 

 careful reading about one-third of the documents on paper, and about 

 one-fifth of those written on palm-leaves. Those selected by me I 

 considered as primary in importance, others as secondary to me ; though 

 not all of them such in themselves. A few of the last may be consider- 

 ed worthless ; others of them as meriting attention. In selecting the 

 first kind I chose those in some degree familiar to me, through the 

 medium of Professor Wilson's catalogue ; those not so familiar, but 

 bearing on points which I wished to investigate ; and those generally 

 which, being in Tamil and Telugu, were within my scope of easier 

 investigation. I may remark, by the way, that it was a subject of 

 regret to find many of the books of paper-manuscripts (as distinguished 

 from those on palm-leaves) greatly injured by termites and other in- 

 sects j extending in a few cases to the destruction, or illegibility, of the 

 documents ; attributable I believe to neglect at Calcutta subsequent to 

 Colonel Mackenzie's death, and before they were delivered over to 

 Professor Wilson. Another remark, equally on the surface, is, that the 

 paper and ink were neither of them, for the most part, such as was to 

 be desired ; being chiefly country-paper, and very pale ink, become 

 partially, or in some few cases wholly, illegible by time. It was further 

 observed that native assistants had carelessly pasted labels on the 

 books, designating the language, in a great number of cases, quite 

 erroneously, Tamil being termed Telugu and vice versa. These 

 errors were afterwards found to be catalogued by Professor Wilson ; 

 it being apparent that his assistants at Calcutta had classed the books, 

 as to language, according to the labels, and then simply copied out 

 the table of contents prefixed, which tables are not always accurate. 

 Some of the manuscripts, moreover, were found to be written by the 

 Colonel's natiye servants in such a scrawl, and with so evident a desire 



