Many of you may have studied not only languages, but also the Science of Language, and is there any country in which some of the most important problems of that science, say only the growth and decay of dialects, or the possible mixture of languages, with regard not only to words, but to grammatical elements also, can be studied to greater advantage than among the Aryan, the Dravidian and the Munda inhabitants of India, when brought in contact with their various invaders and conquerors, the Greeks, the Yue-tchi, the Arabs, the Persians, the Moguls, and lastly the English.
Again, if you are a student of Jurisprudence, there is a history of law to be explored in India, very different from what is known of the history of law in Greece, in Borne, and in Germany, yet both by its contrasts and by its similarities full of suggestions to the student of Comparative Jurisprudence. New materials are being discovered every year, as, for instance, the so-called Dharma or Samayâkârika Sûtras, which have supplied the materials for the later metrical law-books, such as the famous Laws of Manu. What was once called 'The Code of Laws of Manu,' and confidently referred to 1200, or at least 500 b.c., is now hesitatingly referred to perhaps the fourth century a.d., and called neither a Code, nor a Code of Laws, least of all, the Code of Laws of Manu.
If you have learnt to appreciate the value of recent researches into the antecedents of all law, namely the foundation and growth of the simplest political communities—and nowhere could you have had better opportunities for it than here at Cambridge—you
lation of the Gâtaka, dating from the fourteenth century, and he expresses a hope that Dr. Fausböll will soon publish the Pâli original.
