440 



Proceedings of Societies. 



Oct. 



of those best acquainted with the languages and traditions of the country, and 

 having connections or friends dispersed over the Peninsula, the learned world 

 might be put in possession of translations and digests of the mass of MSS. collected 

 by Col. Mackenzie; at the same time that other materials of a similar nature 

 might be sought out and accumulated*. The Vice-President of the Royal Asiatic 

 Society does not seem to have contemplated the organization of an extensive paid 

 establishment of collectors, pandits and copyists ; otherwise it is probable he 

 would have addressed himself to the Government itself, either directly or through 

 the natural channel of the Madras Auxiliary Society. For he would have antici- 

 pated that such an extensive scheme would need the control of a master head, ac- 

 customed to generalization, and capable of estimating the value and drift of inscrip- 

 tion and legendary evidence. The qualifications of Cavelly Venkata for such 

 an office, judging of them by his " abstract," or indeed of any native, could hardly 

 be pronounced equal to such a task, however useful they may prove as auxiliaries 

 in such a train of research. The Pandit's orginal and arithmetical mode of weigh- 

 ing authorities, of which examples may be found in every item of his statement, 

 is any thing but calculated to contradict this assumption. His remarks on the 

 first, or ancient Nandavarrum dynasty of Andhra, may be cited as an instance : 



" As this is a very obscure dynasty, confidence can only be placed in the in- 

 scriptions. From the materials already possessed in the collection of Col. Mac- 

 kenzie, I suppose one-eighth of the history of this dynasty is complete, and the 

 remainder should be completed by further research." 



The Mackenzie Manuscripts (embracing, as Cavelly Venkata says in hi» 

 letter to Government, using the words of the late Colonel himselff, no less than 

 twenty-one different alphabets and fourteen different languages) have been for 

 some time at Madras deposited in the College Library. We have no means of 

 knowing whether during that period the pandit (himself a servant of the college)]: 

 has published or undertaken the translation or analysis of any part of its contents. 

 In the absence of any such testimony of his competence, contrasted with what 

 will be presently urged, it seems impossible to recommend any large outlay of 

 public money in the way he proposes. 



Not that it is undesirable to complete the examination of the Mackenzie 

 papers. On the contrary, all who have read Mr. Wilson's catalogue, will grant 

 that to be an object of high, of national importance; especially when it is 

 asserted that many of the volumes are going rapidly to decay §, and may not be 

 available a few years hence. The British Indian Government has spent a lakh 

 of rupees in purchasing these ancient records : to refuse the requisite aid for 

 their examination and conversion to public use when they are known to contain 

 a vast store of curious and interesting matter, would be false economy, only 

 equalled by the case of the Buchanan MSS. in Calcutta, which cost even a 

 larger sum, and which the Government has recorded its unwillingness to print 

 even free of expense, or to take a single copy of it printed by othersjj. 



* See Madras Lit. Soc. Journal, No. 12, p. 173. 

 f See preface to Wilson's Des. Cat. 



X The Pandit was never in the employ of the College, nor of the Lit. Society; and, while 

 we are on this subject, we may as well point out that the College of Fort St. George, and 

 the Asiatic Department of the Madras Literary Society, (whose property these MSS. now 

 are) though the establishments are (or were) in the same building, are totally different 

 institutions. — Editor Madras Journal. 



\ See Taylor's Hist. Man. 



|| See Mr. Secretary Bushby's Correspondence with the Editor of the Gleanings in 

 Science and Journal Asiatic Society. 



