Page:The religions of India.djvu/27

Rh the book is to be of value, this defect of external resources would have to be compensated for by its internal structure. In all its sections it would require to present a more explicitly reasoned sequence of ideas, and to possess to some extent more compactness of structure, into which the introduction of new matter would be attended with difficulty. The article was therefore reproduced in the Trench edition without alterations. For this very reason also the present edition is in these respects pretty much the same as the French original. Certain inaccuracies in detail have been corrected ; in some passages the text has been relieved to the expansion of the notes ; in others, though more rarely, material intended at first to appear in the footnotes has been admitted into the body of the work; the transcription of Hindu terms in particular has been rendered throughout more rigorous and complete; but in other respects, the text is unaltered, and the additions, as at first, have been committed to the notes.

These last have not merely been brought up to date, so as to give the latest results, but rendered in general more complete than they were in the French edition, in which they had been thrown together in a somewhat hurried fashion. In my regard, they are not calculated to change the character of the work, which has no pretence in its present form, any more than its original, to teach anything to adepts in Indianist studies. They must needs impart an authoritative weight to my statements, which, except where the original authorities were inaccessible to