experience the practical difficulties with which I had to contend, he readily helped to secure to me the leisure indispensable for the work. When the facilities obtained largely through the weight of his recommendation had enabled me to complete my translation and commentary for the press he generously offered his assistance in revising the proofs. This most valuable help to which I owe besides improvements in the form of my translation a number of interesting suggestions separately acknowledged in my notes, extended over the gi-eater portion of the text contained in the first Volume and only ceased with Professor Buhler's lamented death, in the spring of 1898.
The irreparable loss which the study of ancient India has suffered in so many directions by the untimely end of the departed great scholar, has been felt too widely to need my comments here. The results which he achieved in his unceasing endeavours to lay open the true sources of early Indian history, would alone suffice to make his name for ever memorable in the records of Indologist research. In Kasmir it was he who first showed the right way to a critical study of the history of the country, and the very task which I have here endeavoured to solve, had long before been planned by himself, Fate has denied me the hoped-for satisfaction of placing the completed work in the hands of the master who would have been its most competent judge. But assured of his opinion regarding the parts that I was able to submit, I may at least without hesitation dedicate these volumes to his memory as a token of the gratitude and acbniration I shall ever cherish for him.
I have already above had occasion to refer to the advantage I enjoyed by being able to gather valuable information on many points of the traditional and local lore of Kasmir through Pandit Govind Kaul, of S'rinagar. This accomplished Kasmirian scholar, who had already assisted me in collecting some of the critical materials embodied in my edition of the Sanskrit text of the Rajatarangini, continued to act as my amanuensis during the years which I spent over the preparation of my translation and commentary. By arranging under my directions provisional Sanskrit indices for the Rajatarangini, the later Chronicles and other Kasmirian teits requiring constant reference, and by similar labours he lightened for me the great burden of mechanical work which is inseparable from such a task. The identification of Kalhana's numerous allusions to stories contained in the Mahabharata and Puranas is mainly his work. I am also indebted to his aid for a preliminary collation of the Lahore manuscript of the Chronicle which has enabled me to improve the critical constitution of the text underlying my translation.
It is a source of true sorrow to me that this faithful assistant of my labours is no longer among the living. Pandit Govind Kaul died at S'rinagar in the Bummer of 1899, separated from me at the time by the whole breadth of India, But
