Page:Fifty years of the Indian Antiquary.djvu/13

Rh Indian chronological statement. The systematic record of folk tales and the facts of folk-lore was also in its infancy in 1872, and the Indian Antiquary has taken a leading part in the subsequent growth of that important work, from the date of its publication of some Panjab folk-tales, which afterwards proved to be the first effort at classifying the incidents on which folk-tales are built up. But the most remarkable and far reaching change that has taken place is in the advance made by Indian scholars in the knowledge of the principles of critical research and reducing the results thereof into readable English. When the Journal first started, Indians with the requisite knowledge of these principles were very few, and those who could write correct English were fewer still, but in the half century intervening between 1872 and 1922 they have become so numerous as to be able with great credit to themselves to fill nearly the whole Journal. And not only that, they have made it possible to found, as additions to the long established Asiatic Society of Bengal, Bombay Branch Royal Asiatic Society, Madras Literary Society and Calcutta Review, local Research Societies in Calcutta, Madras, Bombay, Allahabad, Lahore, Patna, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mysore and in several Native States, all contributing adequately to a knowledge of the past in India. Another fact as regards change of conditions in Indian learning and general knowledge is that, in order to let Indians know the results of European research as it proceeded, the more remarkable of them by Continental scholars were given in the Indian Antiquary, from time to time, in translations. It will soon not be necessary to continue this practice, as so many Indian scholars are now acquainted with what the English call foreign languages.


 * In order to render the pages of the Indian Antiquary as valuable as possible, general Indices to the first fifty volumes relating to authors and subjects are being prepared with all the cross-references necessary. It is hoped that the entries in the Indices which relate to Inscriptions, their dates and find-spots, and the dynasties and eras concerned with them, will be found to be specially valuable to students in the future.

The following very brief description of the contents of the first 640 issues of the Indian Antiquary will give those interested in Indian Research some idea of the work that has been accomplished by the contributors to its pages during the last fifty years.

Volumes under Dr. James Burgess.— The Contents of Volume I are typical of all the forty-nine volumes that followed and show to some extent how the work has been carried on during the whole half century and the wide range of subjects discussed, scientifically and geographically. They also show the sort of contributors from the first attracted to the Journal, and thus prove the obvious want of it that has been felt. Where a name has been added to the subject it means that the contributor was then, or