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ABOVE forty eight years have elapsed since Professor H.H. WILSON, then Assistant Surgeon in the service of the East India Company, published his translation of the Meghaduta, the first fruits of his literary labours in the mine of Sanskrit Literature. During the nineteen following years, while engaged in various official capacities, chiefly at Calcutta and Benares, and from the time of his return to England in 1832 till his death (on the 8th of May 1860) he continued to pursue his studies and researches on the literature, history, antiquities and religious systems of the Hindus with indefatigable industry. Ever zealously availing himself of the opportunities which were afforded him by his long residence in India and subsequently by his easy access to the rich stores of Manuscripts, accumulated both at the East India House and the Bodleian Library, for extending, depending, and consolidating his investigations in Indian lore, be produced at large number of works of various extent, which for usefulness, depth of learning , and wide range of research shown him to have been the worthy successor of Sir W. JONES and H.T. COLEBROOKE. The just appreciation of his merits, contained in the sketches of his life, character and labour, in the “Annual Report” of the R. Asiat. Soc. For 1860, and in the “Rapport” of the Societe Asiatique for the same year, re-echoes but the meed of admiration and gratitude with which every student of Sanskrit acknowledges the obligations he owes to Professor WILSON’S works, Many of the these however, ranging as they do over a period of nearly half a century, were originally published in periodicals and transactions of oriental Societies no generally accessible, or have otherwise become scarce, while they still are the standard, and in some instances the only, authority on the various topics of which they treat. Every credit, therefore, is due to the publishers of the series of volumes, of which the present is the first instalment, for the spirit and zeal with which they formed, and at once took measures to carry out, the plan of reprinting a selection of his writings, of the six divisions, in which these are to appear, the one containing Essays and Lectures on subjects connected with the religions of the Hindus was proposed to come out first, and at the publishers’ request the undersigned undertook to carry it through the press. As it was found expedient to adhere in each division, as far as practicable, to the chronological order in which the several essays intended for it were originally published, the commencement was made with the celebrated: Sketch of the Religious Sects of the Hindus”, the first portion of which appeared in the Asiatic Research for 1828, and the second (from p. 188 of the present edition) in the volume for 1832.
ISBN :8120620356, 9788120620353
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Pages : 416
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