ORIGINAL PREFACE.
plified in the Scriptores Rerum Italicarum, the Auctores Veteres Historiæ Ecclesiasticæ, the Monumenta Boica, the Recueil des Historiens des Gaules, and a hundred other collections of the same kind—but no objection is urged against them on the ground that each chronicler, taken individually, is not of any conspicuous merit. They are universally considered as useful depositories of knowledge, from which the labour and diligence of succeeding scholars may extract materials for the erection of a better and more solid structure. This country offers some peculiar facilities for such a collection, which it would be vain to look for elsewhere; since the number of available persons, sufficiently educated for the purpose of transcribing, collating, and indexing, is very large, and they would be content with a small remuneration. Another urgent reason for undertaking such a work in this country, is the incessant depredation which insects, moths, dust, moisture, and vermin are committing upon the small store of manuscripts which is now extant. Every day is of importance in rescuing the remnant from still further damage, as was too painfully evident a short time ago, from a report presented to the Asiatic Society of Bengal, respecting the injury which has already been sustained by their collection.
On the other hand, it must not be concealed, that in India, independent of the want of standard books of reference, great difficulties beset the enquirer in this path of literature, arising chiefly from one of the defects in the national character, viz. : the intense desire for parade and ostentation, which induces authors to quote works they have never seen, and to lay claim to an erudition which the limited extent of their knowlege does not justify. For instance, not many years ago there was published at Agra a useful set of chronological tables of the Moghal dynasty, said to be founded on the authority of several excellent works named by the author. Having been long in search of many of these works, I requested from the author a more particular account of them. He replied that some had been once in his possession and had been given away; some he had borrowed; and some were lost or mislaid; but the parties to whom he had given, and from whom he had borrowed, denied all knowledge of the works, or even of their titles. Indeed, most of them contained nothing on the subject which they were intended to
