50 Or. A. Grierson — Study of Indian Vernaculars in Europe. [No 1, 
considerable success. It may be noted that the various postpositions 
ha, he, hi, ho, &c ., are treated as declensional forms of the indefinite 
article, which are placed after a substantive, instead of before as in 
Portuguese. 
This concludes my notice of the 1 Early Study of Indian Vernaculars 
in Europe.’ A good deal had been done, but the results had hardly 
penetrated to India. In 1783, the judicious Colebrooke wrote from 
Calcutta to his family ‘ you recommend my being assiduous in acquiring 
the languages. It is what I intend, but there is no danger of my apply- 
ing too intensely. The one, and that the most necessary, Moors,’ i. e., 
Hindustani, ‘ by being not written, bars all close application ; the other, 
Persian, is too dry to entice, and is so seldom of any use that I seek its 
acquisition very leisurely.’ 1 The following year (1784) saw the founding 
of the Asiatic Society, and it is one of our most legitimate sources of 
pride that it took up the clue where it had been dropped by the Roman 
Catholic Missionaries, and under the influence of men like Sir W. 
Jones, Wilkins, and especially Gilchrist, the Indian Vernaculars ceased 
to be despised for ‘ not being written ’ and became the object of investi- 
gations which have continued to the present day. 
The sacred lamp so lit has never been extinguished, and the 
greatest living authorities on the subject, Mr. Beanies and Dr. Hoernle, 
are still, I am glad to say, Members of the Society. 
ADDENDUM. 
La Croze. 
I am indebted to Mr. Quaritch for the following extract from the 
Nouvelle Biogmphie Generate, which gives a full account of this eminent 
orientalist. 
Vetssiere, de la Croze (Mathurin). — orientaliste fran^ais ne a 
Nantes le 4 Decembre 1661, mort a Berlin 1c 21 Mai 1739. Degoute do 
T etude par la severity mal entendue de son maitre, il s’embarqua a 
quatorze ans, pour la Guadeloupe, oil son pere negotiant eclaird, avait des 
relations d affaires. Pendant le sejour qu’il fit dans cette ile, il acquit 
la connaissance des langues anglaise, espagnole et portugaise. A son 
retour il entra comme novice dans le couvent des benedictins a Samur 
(1677), et y prit l’habit (1682). Bien que la vie studieuse de cette 
ongregation fut de son gout, il eut des demeles avec le supdrieur et fut 
menace de la prison. Effraye du sort qu’il croyait l’attendre, il reussit a 
1 Life, p. 13. 
