before my transcript of the Burhan could become complete. It is only after many years of patient and persistent effort that I have completed my collection of the Persian MSS, which form the original sources of the history of the Bahmanis and the five Muhammadan kingdoms that succeeded them in the Deccan.
Even books printed in India have in many cases entirely disappeared from the market. Marathi printed materials often become absolutely unprocurable within twenty years of their publication. Thus, I have failed to secure any copy of the Chitragupta Bakhar and the 96-qalmi Bakhar, both printed. The Calcutta University, I learn, has not been able to get any copy of the Shiva-digvijay, which I luckily bought ten years ago. Similarly, the old Reports of the E. I. Co., and the early Parliamentary Blue-books, so indispensable to students of our economic history, are extremely rare and in some cases appear in the second hand book market at intervals of 20 or 25 years only.
These examples will clearly demonstrate the necessity of a well-planned, sustained and expert-directed search for MSS and rare books on the part of our Universities if they aim at true research. First make your bibliography of desiderata with the help of experts, then spread the hunt over years, never relaxing your efforts, but keeping your eyes ever open on the book-lists of the second-hand dealers of France, Holland (Martinus Nijhoff) and Germany as well as England in some cases advertise your wants in England. Thus only can you succeed within a reasonable space of time.
VI. How to Use the Rarest MSS, Which are Now in Europe
The rarest and most valuable Sanskrit, Pali, Persian and Arabic MSS have found their way to the great European capitals and Universities and thus been saved to mankind. The India Office, London, has a very rich Sanskrit collection, the nature and value of which can be judged from Eggeling's catalogue (1884-1904). Manuscripts from this library are lent to scholars in any part of the world on proper security. But most of the other great collections, notably the British Museum, the Bodleian and the Bibliotheque Nationale,—do not send any MS outside. All that scholar in India can do is to take copies of them by the rotary bromide process which is quicker and cheaper than ordinary photographs. Indians working on our antiquities or philology do not sufficiently realise the necessity of securing such rotographs of the rarest and oldest Sanskrit or Pali MSS. in their subjects belonging to these European libraries. They prefer to work on corrupt modern printed editions of these books and where they have not been printed to ignore their existence. The value of the colophons of very old MSS to the historian has been demonstrated by the light which the Nepal MSS have thrown on the chronology of the Pala kings. There must be many more Sanskrit works of equal importance in the British Museum, the Bodleian or even the Vatican.
VII. Let the Universities Co-operate and Avoid Overlapping
The task before the Indian Universities if they want to do their duty is, therefore, a heavy one, a costly one. It is necessary for us to economise our resources. When people pursue reckless or extravagant schemes of University expansion, and talk glibly of the custodian of the public purse footing the bill and snarl at the custodian when he naturally pleads inability to be eternally assisting with State doles those who are constitutionally incapable of cutting their coat according to their cloth, these people forget that all money spent by the Universities, whether fees, sale-proceeds of monopoly books, private subscriptions or subsidies from the public revenue,— comes ultimately from the Indian tax-payer, India is a country of poor people, of a population whose elementary wants have not yet been fully supplied by State activity. Waste and improvidence would be a crime here.
