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IX Having put them into the hands of this most formidable of personalities. I gave them to the others, and in fact this led to the urgent invitation from Darmesteter to become his continuator on the Sacred Books of the East, which also put in train my connection with this University (Oxford). So, some years afterward, when the ﬁrst sections of the Gâthas were ready, at the urgent request of some of my leading colleagues, I sent them copies, receiving grateful acknowledgments from them in private communications.

The various expressions of opinion referred to were important enough to me at one period, for there was as usual a clique of mendacious pretenders (of a known type) who had control of some of the newspapers. And as to one particular they are important to me now, for they show that I have worked in a catholic spirit. Those distinguished gentlemen who have expressed themselves with much toleration of my well-meant labours belong to various schools. They prove by their sympathy that they do not regard my results as one-sided. To my sorrow I must confess that I have spent more time and labour on this subject and its adjuncts than any one now living, or I might almost say than any one without the qualification; and on the whole with greater facilities. The XXXIst volume of the Sacred Books of the East was made after the only exhaustive effort ever even attempted by any one, for I had edited the Asiatic Commentaries, Pahlavi, with all the known MSS, collated, the Sanskrit with ﬁve MSS, and the Persian, and made the first attempt ever made by any one at a full