Page:A Catalogue of Sanskrit Manuscripts in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge (1869).djvu/8

 PREFACE.

The collection of Manuscripts described in the present volume was formerly in the possession of Mr. John Bentley, the author of "An Historical View of the Hindu Astronomy from the earliest dawn of that science in India to the present time. London, 1825." By far the greater part of the MSS. are copies made at Calcutta in the beginning of this century, and are transcribed in the Bengali character. Both these circumstances detract, to some extent, from the value of the collection, since modern transcripts are seldom accompanied with the necessary degree of fidelity, and because the Bengali alphabet is wanting in distinctness and individuality of type. An ignorant clerk, transcribing Devanâgari into Bengali, or the reverse, is sure to commit innumerable blunders, a fact rendered painfully clear in the copy of the Gargasaṃhitâ, in the present collection. Mr. Bentley had studied his own MSS. with great care, and frequent marginal notes testify to his zeal and industry; but many of his statements are marred by the