I had not, therefore, the resource of being able to relegate
my impedimenta to the foot of the pages, a resource which
in such a case was almost indispensable, since I had to
address a reader who was not a specialist, and I was myself averse to be obliged to limit myself to a colourless and
inexact statement. All I had to say and explain must
either be said and explained in the text, or suppressed
altogether. The result was that I loaded my text to the
utmost possible extent, often, I must say, at the expense
of fluency of diction, and I also suppressed a good deal.
I left out, with no small reluctance, more than one remark,
which, though of secondary, was yet of serviceable importance, because it would have interrupted the continuity of
what I sought mainly to develop. I sacrificed especially
a considerable number of those particularities, such as not
unfrequently defy all attempts at circumlocution, yet impart to matters the exact shade of meaning that belongs to them, but which would have required observations in explanation such as I could have introduced only at the expense of interlarding my pages with an array of incongruous parentheses. In these circumstances I did all I could to retain at least as much as possible of the substance; and those Indianists who may be pleased to look into my work will see, I think, that under the enforced generalities of my exposition there lies concealed a certain amount of minuteness of investigation.
These shortcomings I was able to remedy in a measure in the impressions which I was solicited to issue in a separate form shortly after, and to which I was free to add annotations. By this means it was possible to append the bibliography, as well as a goodly number of detached remarks and technical details. As to the text itself, even if I had had the necessary time, it would have been difficult to have modified it in any important particular. The redaction of a scientific treatise written without divisions into chapters and intended to remain without notes, must assume a form more or less of an abnormal character. If
