PROCEEDINGS. 
FIEST MEETING. 
The first meeting of the Madras Literary Society and 
Auxiliary of the Eoyal Asiatic Society for the Sessions 
1886-87 was held in the Theatre of the Government 
Central Museum at Madras on the 2nd December 1886, 
His Excellency Sir Mountstuart Grant Dufi" in the chair. 
In opening the proceedings His Excellency said : — 
" Ladies and Gtenti.emen, — I felt much honoured when I was 
asked to take the chair on this occasion, on which the famous 
Literary Society of Madras, returning to the ancient ways, is to 
hold its first meeting of the good old kind after a period of quies- 
cence. And why should corporate bodies, as well as individual 
bodies, not have their periods of quiescence ? ' He who sleeps doth 
not sin,' saith the true Russian proverb. The men who have 
taken most pains about this gathering are no rash innovators ; 
they have even provided that it should take place not only on a 
Thursday, but on the first Thursday of the month, in terms of a 
Resolution of February 1844, and that the members might bring 
friends, according to the same Resolution. I am pleased, too, that 
the papers to be read this evening are neither exclusively literary 
nor exclusively scientific. Long ago, as far back as September 
1833, the following passage was penned in the introduction to the 
first number of the Society's Journal : — ' The great and well- 
deserved success that attended the journal of the Asiatic Society 
of Calcutta has pointed it out as a fit and appropriate model after 
which to found the Madras periodical which is about to be estab- 
lished under the auspices of the Literary Society and Auxiliary 
