viii 
PROCEEDINGS. 
of the Royal Asiatic Society. The work in question will not, 
however, be confined to papers drawn from the archives of the 
Society ; nor is it intended to be restricted to elaborate essays 
or scientific disquisitions, but will be open to communications of a 
less formal nature upon every subject tending to afford useful 
information in regard to the people and country of India. It is 
evident indeed that the work cannot prosper if dependent alone 
on the limited stores of the Society, and it must mainly depend 
for success upon the support it may receive from the community 
at large, who will find in it a ready vehicle for conveying to the 
world the result of their discoveries, researches and observations, 
in all that relates to the literature, arts, sciences, natural history, 
&c., &c., of this country.' That is, as it should be. As in educa- 
tion, so in life, literature and science should be kept together, and 
neither of them allowed to oust her sister from a fair share of 
attention. It is important, too, to observe that this is a Society 
for the whole Presidency in its widest sense, and that assistance is 
invoked of all frieuds to literature and science through the whole 
of South India, whether European or Native. A great deal has 
already been done to make this country better known to the 
Western world ; still an immense amount of work remains to be 
done, and we who really care about India require — now more than 
ever before — the assistance of men of science and letters to preserve 
one of the most interesting countries in the world from the hands 
of the Bores ! — from that thrice-accursed race who, led now by 
one wearisome creature, and now by another, keep prosing on plat- 
forms, or in books, or magazines, or where not, about what ought to 
be done in India, with the minimum of knowledge of the facts 
of India. How is it that India is a subject from which so many 
of the best men in London turn with loathing, while so mam* of 
the best men in Paris find it delightful ? Just because the chai-m 
and poetry of the East have been drowned for the English reader 
in Serbonian bogs of financial and administrative chatter, exhila- 
rating to no creature, while the only association which the educated 
Frenchman has with the land in which we live is with the stores 
