THE Government of Madras has made praiseworthy efforts to bring under the notice of Orientalists and to facilitate the use of the splendid collections of Oriental MSS. in charge of the Board of Examiners. We now possess two volumes of a Catalogue Raisonné of these collections by the Rev. W. Taylor and the first part of an alphabetical catalogue by Kondasvámi Ayyar. The largest portion of these MSS. is in Sanskrit, and to that portion, as I cannot claim any knowledge of the Dravidian languages, I shall confine the following remarks.
The Madras library has the advantage of possessing a very large number of Sanskrit MSS. In fact there will be found few libraries either in Asia or in Europe which can rival it in this respect. But it is not only the number of granthas (1249) which entitles the library to rank amongst the first: the quality of the books is equally remarkable, and we find among them a very large number of hitherto unknown works and some which were thought to be lost. In Vedic and Vedantic literature there is a fine collection of Upanishads[2],—the largest known. It contains as many as one hundred and eight books designated by this name, most of which are accompanied by commentaries. It is true that only a small portion of these Upanishads can be regarded as part of the çruti, the ancient Veda-literature. Most of
- ↑ A Catalogue Raisonnée (sic.) of Oriental Manuscripts in the library of the (late) College, Fort Saint George, now in charge of the Board of Examiners. By the Rev. William Taylor, Madras, vol. i 1857, vol. ii, 1860.
An Alphabetical Catalogue in the Vernacular and English characters of the Oriental Manuscripts in the library of the Board of Examiners, prepared by order of Government by T. S. Condaswami Ayyar, Librarian MSS. library, vol. I. Madras, 1861. - ↑ A class of writings whose object is to discover the secret sense of the Veda.—Ed.
