Page:The Message and Ministrations of Dewan Bahadur R. Venkata Ratnam, volume 2.djvu/413

 that could master the principles of different sciences. After having tried, with con- siderable credit, the study of medicine and of law, he chalked out a brilliant career for himself in the investigation of the Ancient History and Archaeology of his country. To excel in the, particular life which he chose, he worked hard and honestly for amply equipping himself with all the requisite knowledge; and he thus acquired a command of something like a dozen languages. Thus, in his own chosen life-work the gifted author of the "Buddha-Gaya" and the "Indo-Aryans" stood not only inapproachably ahead of his countrymen working in the same field but also quite abreast with the best scholars of Europe and America; with a good many of whom he was on terms of learned correspondence, measuring swords with some of them occasionally. Apart from his contributions to journals, magazines and " transactions," in which he seemed almost to rival the fertility of a Heyne (as Carlyle reports it), his larger productions are very