VI
dimensions of a magizine article (see Roth’s Festgruss, Yasna 28, in the sister tongue Sanskrit, Acts of the Congress of Orientalists at London in 1892, and at Paris in 1897 ‘The Sanskrit Equivalents of Yasna 44’, (things of the utmost practical use), articles in the Zeitschrift of the German Oriental Society, in the American Journal of Philology, Journal of the American Oriental Society, of the Royal Asiatic Society, in the Critical Review, the Nineteenth Century Review, the Thinker, the Asiatic Quarterly Review, etc., etc. with dates spread over the last twelve years). But there seems to be no end to the questions involved, and masses of MSS. still remain awaiting space for printing or time for re-copying. No,-I do not Wish to minimise the the difficulties as I am myself the chief sufferer from them.
But in the meantime, a free rendering as a temporary help is an absolute necessity if we are ever to get them (more popularly) read. Professors and leading scholars ex- pressed themselves as pleased with my translations in the XXXIst volume of the Sacred Books of the East (1887); others however found them too roughly literal. (One of my pupils used to say that he could read the Gathas using them almost without a lexicon). But the penalty was a somewhat uncouth diction. I cannot of course attempt to remedy that detect here; that edition was the only literary one which I could offer then; and for such a series as the Sacred Books of the East I should not even new venture on rounding off the asperities.
Notwithstanding a too little attractive exterior it was as Darmesteter wrote me (for I then dared not look myself) ‘déjà cité et apprecie par tous les specialistes' which was enough surely. And the chief fault which I find with it now is that it is at present some twelve years older than when it left its author’s hand[1].
- ↑ It was the report of a good bit of a lifetime’s labour. (l apologise for much of the personal tone here; it has been elicited by the in gratitude of a pupil, and of some so-called old friends who are greatly in my debt).
