Page:Works by the late Horace Hayman Wilson Vol I.djvu/11

 series of volumes, the first of which, containing "A Sketch of the Religious Sects of the Hindus," is here laid before the reader.

On account of the variety of manuscript sources in Persian, Sanskrit, Bengali, and different dialects of Hindi, from which the author gleaned the materials for this Sketch, thorough uniformity in the transliteration of Indian names would have been beyond what could be expected by any-one ever so slightly acquainted with the various graphical, and still more phonetical, changes to which Sanskrit words are liable when passing into the vernacular idioms of modern India. No improvement in this respect was aimed at in the reprint of this work, which appeared at Calcutta in the year 1846 (pp. 238, in 8vo), and in which even the most obvious misprints of the original edition were re- produced with scrupulous fidelity. Much care has, however, been bestowed in the present edition upon the orthography of Indian words, both ancient and modern, with a view to the maintenance of, at least, as much etymological consistency as shall enable the student to trace without difficulty their original forms. In some cases, slight but unavoidable discrepancies will be detected, occasioned, it is