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study of Indian antiquities received its first im­pulse from, who in 1781 founded the Asiatic Society of Bengal. Amongst the first members were Warren Hastings, the ablest of our Indian rulers, and Charles Wilkins, who was the first Englishman to acquire a knowledge of Sanskrit, and who cut with his own hands the first Devanagari and Bengali types. During a residence of little more than ten years, Sir William Jones opened the treasury of Sanskrit literature to the world by the transla­tion of Sakuntala and the institutes of Manu. His annual discourses to the Society showed the wide grasp of his mind; and the list of works which he drew up is so comprehensive that the whole of his scheme of translations has not even yet been completed by the separate labours of many suc­cessors. His first work was to establish a systematic and uniform system of orthography for the transcription of Oriental languages, which, with a very few modifications, has since been generally adopted. This was followed by several essays—On Musical Modes—On the Origin of the Game of Chess, which he traced to India—and On the Lunar Year of the Hindus and their Chronology. In the last paper he made the identification of Chandra-Gupta with Sandrakottos, which for many years was the sole firm ground in the quicksands of Indian history. At the same time he suggested that Palibothra, or Pataliputra, the capital of Sandrakottos, must be Patna, as he found that the S6n River, which joins the Ganges only a few miles above Patna, was also named Hiranyabahu, or the “ golden-armed,” an appellation which at once re-called the Erranoboas of Arrian.

The early death of Jones in 1794, which seemed at first to threaten the prosperity o f the newly established Society,