PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
The present grammar, which is published at the request and under the patronage of Mr. J. B. Peile, the Director of Public Instruction in this Presidency, is intended principally for Indian students. It contains as much of the Sanskrit accidence as is necessary for the ordinary B.A. examination. Those who look higher; I refer to the Siddhanta-Kaumudi and other indigenous works on grammar, without a careful study of which a scholarlike knowledge of the Sanskrit language appears to me unattainable.
My chief aim in composing this grammar has been correctness, and to attain this object I have considered it the safest plan not to give any rules nor to put down any forms without the authority of the best native grammarians. I trust I may not appear presumptuous in maintaining that this has not always been an easy task, and that in many cases much patient labour and weighing of arguments had to be gone through before a certain form could, on the best possible authority, either be accepted as correct or rejected as incorrect. The result of my labour is before the public; and, having done my best, I shall be grateful to every one who will take the trouble to point out to me any errors which insufficient care or reading or want of judgment has allowed me to pass unnoticed.
On the arrangement of my grammar only few words need be said here. I have considered it necessary to separate the roots of
