our pride, or increasing our prestige, but that a vast population may be conciliated, benefited, and elevated, and the regenerating influences of Christianity spread through the length and breadth of the land. How, then, have we executed our mission ? Much is now being done ; but the results effected are mainly due to the growth of a more cordial feeling, and a better understanding between Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, and Musalmans. And these good results may be expected to increase if the true character of the three principal systems of religion opposed to Christianity, and now existing in India, British Burmah, and Ceylon, are fairly tested by an impartial examination of the written documents held sacred by each; if the points of contact between Christianity, Brahmanism, Buddhism, and Islam become better appreciated, and Christians while loyally devoting themselves— heart and soul, body and mind—to the extension of the one true faith, are led to search more candidly for the fragments of truth, lying buried under superstition and error.
Be it remembered, then, that Sanskrit literature,—bound up as it has ever been with all that is sacred in the religion and institutions of India,—is the source of all trustworthy knowledge of the Hindus ; and to this literature Englishmen must turn, if they wish to understand the character and mind of nearly two hundred millions (or about five-sixths) of India's population (see pp. xvi-xx of Introduction).
Some departments of Sanskrit literature have been fully described of late years by various competent and trustworthy scholars. Good translations, too, of isolated works, and excellent metrical versions of the more choice poems have from time to time been published in Europe, or are scattered about in Magazines, Reviews, and ephemeral publications. But there has never hitherto, so far as I know, existed any one work of moderate dimensions like the present—accessible to general readers—composed
