no facilities were incontinently
withdrawn from me at Benmore. I have particularly to thank the Librarian
of the Imperial Library, Calcutta, who not only posted me books in his
charge but went out of his way to procure me others. Mrs. Besant and her
wealthy adherents have created at Adyar the atmosphere associated with
the Ashramas and the seats of learning in ancient India so finely
described by Chinese travellers. The Oriental Library there is
unsurpassed by any institution in British or Indian ruled India. It is
to be wished in the interests of pure scholarship that some one
succeeds--I did not--in prevailing on the President of the Theosophical
Society to lend books to scholars who may not be equal to the exertion
of daily travelling seven miles from Madras to Adyar. Her insistence on
a rigid imitation of British Museum rules in India, mainly because so
many of the Theosophical fraternity cut out pages and chapters from
books once allowed to be borrowed by them, inflicts indiscriminate
penalty on honest research and seals up against legitimate use books
nowhere else to be found in India.

I reserve for the Second Part of this book some observations on the
Russian language with reference to Orientalism, and Arabic and Persian
literatures in particular. Only after the outbreak of the War some
interest has been aroused in England in matters Russian generally and a
number of grammars and dictionaries and other aids to the study of this
most difficult language have recently been placed on the market for the
use of students who only a brief three years ago had to depend mainly on
German for acquisition of Russian. This neglect of Russian is wholly
undeserved. It is doubtful if the researches into Oriental histories and
literatures by the Russians have been yet adequately appreciated in
England, the tireless efforts of Dr. Pollen and the Anglo-Russian
Literary Society notwithstanding. It is apparently still presumed that
ripe scholarship in Arabic and Sanskrit is inconceivable except through
the medium of the languages of Western Europe. No unworthy disparagement
of French labours is at all suggested. But it is only fair to Russia to
remember in India that the absence of a Serg d'Oldenberg would leave a
lacuna which must be felt in Buddhist Sanskrit; without Tzerbatski the
Jain literature both Magadhi and Sanskrit would be appreciably poorer;
and that the Continent has produced nothing to exceed the series of
Buddhist Sans