72 



Professoe Buhler's Remarks 



Remarks on the Sanskrit Manuscripts in Madras by Dr. 

 Georg Buhler, Professor of Sanskrit in the Elphinstone 

 College, Bombay. (a) 



nnHE Government of Madras has made praisew orthy efforts 

 to bring under the notice of Orientalists and to facili- 

 tate the use of the splendid collections of Oriental MSS. in 

 charge of the Board of Examiners. We now possess two 

 volumes of a Catalogue Raisonne' of these collections by the 

 Rev. W. Taylor and the first part of an alphabetical catalogue 

 by Kondasvami Ayyar. The largest portion of these MSS. is 

 in Sanskrit, and to that portion, as I cannot claim any 

 knowledge of the Dravidian languages, I shall confine the 

 following remarks. 



The Madras library has the advantage of possessing a 

 very large number of Sanskrit MSS. In fact there will be 

 found few libraries either in Asia or in Europe which can rival 

 it in this respect. But it is not only the number of granthas 

 (1249) which entitles the library to rank amongst the 

 first : the quality of the books is equally remarkable, and we 

 find among them a very large number of hitherto unknown 

 Works and some which were thought to be lost. In Vedic and 

 Vedantic literature there is a fine collection of Upanish- 

 ads(6), — the largest known. It contains as many as one 

 hundred and eight books designated by this name, most of 

 which are accompanied by commentaries. It is true that 

 only a small portion of these Upanishads can be regarded as 

 part of the cruti, the ancient Veda-literature. Most of 



(a) A Catalogue Raisonnee (sic.) of Oriental Manuscripts in the library 

 of the (late) College, Fort Saint George, now in charge of the Board of 

 Examiners. By the Rev. William Taylor, Madras, vol. I 1857, vol. n, 1860. 



An Alphabetical Catalogue in the Vernacular and English characters of 

 the Oriental Manuscripts in the library of the Board of Examiners, pre- 

 pared by order of Government by T. S. Condaswami Ayvar, Librarian 

 MSS. library, vol. I. Madras, 18C1. 



(6) A class of writings whose object is to discover the secret sense of 

 the Veda — Ed. 



