1837.] Historical Sketch of the Kingdom of Pandya. 



157 



Langlois has done so ; only omitting the needful point of printing the 

 text in parallel pages. I may add that the Honorable G. Tumour, 

 whom I ought to place perhaps first, has followed the same system in 

 his translation of the Mahawanso, and, allowing for others unknown to 

 me, we have two scholars, and myself— a humble third labourer— act- 

 ing on one plan, as nearly as possibly at one time, and in three 

 very distant places on the globe. And we, with those that may 

 join with us, shall ultimately prevail. When I most respect- 

 fully add the Committee of Papers of the Bengal Asiatic Society, 

 and, as I believe, I may do, the Committee of Papers of the Madras 

 Literary Society, to those who approve of this plan of proceeding, I 

 do not mean to place them last and least, but to shew that there is as 

 strong a re-inforcement as perhaps can be offered or expected. 

 Premature historians will not stand the test of the results ; and syco- 

 phant critics will not impede them. 



As regards the difficulties of translation in Europe, concerning which 

 I have more than once offered an opinion, the experience of M. 

 Langlois may also be adduced, though those difficulties are less as 

 regards Sanscrit possibly than any other language of India. M. Lang- 

 lois says,—" I am myself first to feel all the imperfection of my work, 

 which has been performed from a text deduced from three manu- 

 scripts, not very correct ; of which two, the one Bengali, and the other 

 Devanagari, belong to the Royal Library at Paris, and the third 

 given by Mr. Tod to the Asiatic Society of London, was obligingly 

 communicated to me. But no one of them had a commentary ; of 

 which I but too often found the need. Phrases singularly 

 concise, allusions incomprehensible, words unknown, have often 

 stopped me ; and 1 ought not to flatter myself that I have al- 

 ways avoided the danger of shipwreck which they presented to me. 

 I. may have made mistakes ; but I venture to hope that the learned, 

 who alone will perceive them, will be most ready to pardon me, ap- 

 preciating, with a kindly feeling, all the difficulties which I had to 

 overcome."* As an example of those difficulties, M. Langlois meets 

 with the word, Vasous (Vasus), and in a note he asks " what are the 

 " Vasus ? I avow that in this point, I can only form conjectures." I 

 do not quote the example invidiously, far from it : for M. Langlois has 

 done his difficult work, generally speaking, well ; but such are the 

 difficulties to which scholars in Europe are liable. The text along 

 with the translation, in parallel columns, would have, been desirable : 

 and when India's own native works, fabulous, mythological, allegorical, 

 poetical, and the like— always denying the epithet historical— shall 

 have been, on that plan, duly and fully developed, either I greatly err, 

 or India will cease to want a history. 



* Introduction p. xv,. 



