Page:Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal Vol 29.djvu/334

312 of Professor H. H. Wilson, and to express at the same time the sincere and affectionate regrets with which this Society finds itself deprived of the advice and assistance of its oldest and most distinguished member.

In moving this resolution, the President spoke as follows:—"I need scarcely remind the Meeting that since we last met the mail has brought us the announcement of the death of a very old, indeed our oldest Member. Horace Hayman Wilson, late Boden Professor at Oxford, died in London on the 18th May at the advanced age of 73 after a connexion with our Society of more than half a century; for he joined us immediately on arriving in this country in 1808, a period at which we had only just established ourselves in the building in which we now sit. Colebrooke was then our President, and Hunder had been our Secretary with a short interval from 1798, so that by his succession to Hunter as Secretary, in 1810, Wilson has a title to be ranked among our earliest office-bearers. He filled the Secretaryship for 22 years; in fact until his retirement from India in 1833; and during this long period he devoted himself almost exclusively to the study of the Sanscrit classics. His first work was the translation of the Megha Duta, and in 1819 he brought out the first edition of the first Sanscrit and English Dictionary which had been compiled. He then published his Selections from the Hindoo Drama and the catalogue of the Mackenzie MSS., and was, when he left this country, engaged on his analysis of the Purans, four of which he completed before his departure, and the original MSS. of which are all in our Library. These works, however, were by no means all his contributions to Oriental literature. One of the most important papers which has appeared in our Researches was written by him in 1825; I allude to his Essay on the Hindoo History of Cashmere, which, with other papers, helps to make Vol. XV. of our Researches the most interesting, perhaps, of the series.

The address which was presented to Wilson by our President, Sir E. Ryan, and his Vice-Presidents, Drs. Mill and Tytler in December 1832, shows how fully our Society then appreciated the loss which it was about to sustain of his eminent services, while his answer evinced the unabated interest in our Society's proceedings which he was carrying away with him.