Page:Monier Monier-Williams - Indian Wisdom.djvu/15

 by any one Sanskrit scholar with the direct aim of giving Englishmen who are not necessarily Sanskritista, a continuous sketch of the chief departments of Sanskrit literature, Vedic and Post-vedic, with accompanying translations of select passages, to serve as examples for comparison with the literary productions of other countries.

The plan pursued by me in my endeavour to execute a novel and difficult task in a manner likely to be useful to Oriental students, yet intelligible to general readers, and especially to those men of cultured minds who, not being Orientalists, are desirous of accurate information on subjects they can no longer ignore, will be sufficiently evident from a perusal of the lectures themselves, and their appended notes. To avoid misapprehension and exaggerated ideas of my scope and aim, as well as to understand the extent of my obligations to other scholars, let the reader turn to pp. 1-4 with notes, p. 15, note 2. I will merely add to what is there stated, that as Vedic literature has been already so ably elucidated by numerous scholars in Europe, and by Professor W. D. Whitney and others in America, I have treated this part of the subject as briefly as possible. Moreover, my survey of so vast and intricate a field of inquiry as Indian philosophy, is necessarily a mere sketch. In common with other European scholars, I am greatly indebted to Dr. Fitz-Edward Hall for his contributions to this and other departments of Sanskrit literature, and especially for his translation of Nehemiah Nilakantha's 'Rational Refutation of the Hindu Philosophical Systems.'

I should state that, although the present volume is intended to be complete in itself, I have been compelled to reserve some of the later portion of the literature for fuller treatment in a subsequent series of lectures.