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your address with regard to my Dictionary. I beg to assure you that nothing would afford me more satisfaction than to meet the wishes of those learned gentlemen. I shall do myself the pleasure of forwarding to you after our holidays, two sets of my Lexicon, (of which five volumes have already been issued from the press,) and hope you will have the goodness to despatch them with my compliments, for the acceptance of those two gentlemen.

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I take this opportunity to inform you that Dr. H. II. Wilson wrote to me, that the emperor of Russia had agreed to pay the expense printing a complete edition of the Rig Veda with the commentary of Sáyana Acharya, and that the first book of the Sanhita of the Rig Veda has already been published with an English translation, by a gentleman at Bombay. I have also seen the text of the Sáma Veda Sanhita, with a translation of it, by Dr. Stevenson of Bombay, printed for the Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland.

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SIR,—With reference to the question whether the Vedas should be printed under the superintendence of Pundits of this country or of Benares, I beg to state that Pundits from Benares ought to be preferred to those of this country, for the following reasons:

1st. The Pundits of Benares make the Vedas the special subject of their studies, and are consequently the fittest persons to edit them.

2nd. The ancient dialect in which the Vedas are composed, is extremely difficult and obscure. It is impossible to find two consecutive lines of a Vedaic Sanhita, in which there is not some obsolete word, some antiquated form of construction or some unusual inflexion; so that without a knowledge of the Niructa and Bhasya, no Pundit however well versed in modern Sanscrita literature can understand the Sanhitas.

3rd. The fact of there being no Vedaic school in all Bengal is well known, and therefore it cannot be expected that men educated in the Sanscrita schools of Bengal shall possess competency for the creditable execution of this important undertaking.

4th. All the Vedaic MSS. that I have seen are more or less defective, and it is impossible to produce a good edition of the work by the mere collation of those manuscripts, and by adopting such expressions out of the different "readings" that will occur in the various manuscripts that may be consulted, and deciding in all other questions of doubt, by the impulse of our own taste and predilections without consulting those who are best able to pass opinions on the subject.

5th. There being no difficulty about getting aid from Benares, I see no reason why the work should be entrusted to parties, who possess no special knowledge of the Vedas in preference to those who have devoted their lives to their study. I take this opportunity, further most respectfully to suggest that it is desireable that there should be a Committee appointed of men well conversant with the Sanscrita literature, to superintend the publication and co-operate with the Pundits who are to edit the Vedas, in collating and revising the manuscripts, so that there be sufficient guarantee for the authenticity, correctness and faithful execution of the task.

I am, Sir,

Your most Obedt. Servt.

RAJENDRALAL MITTRA,

April 7th, 1847.

Assist. Sec. & Librarian, Asiatic Society.

As four complete manuscripts of the Rigveda Sunghita have been procured, I think there exists no objection as to the commencement of the undertaking as proposed. With a view however to the satisfactory execution of the task, I would propose that no time should be lost in taking measures for the purpose of obtaining the services of a Pundit thoroughly versed in the Vedaic literature.

Agreed.

D. N. TAGORE.

J. LONG.

Dr. Roer's valuable suggestions with those to which he refers in his letter, should, I think, be recommended to the Committee of Papers. G. A. BUSHBY.

I think Dr. Roer's suggestions, to commence the publication of the first Ved with an English Translation, a very good one, and would adopt it; probably many Hindus will read it in an English Translation, who could not in the original. It is very desirable to bring these old books within the easy reach of men's minds.

WELBY JACKSON.

Statement of the Portions of the Vedas and their Commentaries which exist at Benares, communicated by a J. MUIR, Esq. Civil Service, 1846.

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JOURNAL.

OF THE

ASIATIC SOCIETY.

JUNE, 1847.

On the Local and Relative Geology of Singapore, including Notices of Sumatra, the Malay Peninsula, &c.-by J. R. LOGAN, Esq.

[The following paper was sent to the Asiatic Society of Bengal in January 1846. The delay which has taken place in its publication in their Journal, enables the writer to append an extract from a letter to Professor Ansted, in which he has given a summary of the results of his subsequent observations made in localities more favorable for geological inquiries than those to which his attention had been confined when the paper was written. It may save the reader some trouble if he be furnished at once with the key to the theoretical discrepancies which may be noticed between the paper and the letter. He thinks it better to do this, and to leave the former as it stands with all its faults, rather than to alter it in conformity with his more matured, but still imperfect, views. The geology of every fresh region has to be worked out amidst doubts and errors, and a record of the stages through which its theory, if at all new, passes in its progress towards complete truth, may often serve ultimately as its best demonstration, because it will show that it was not hastily adopted, but gradually grew out of a long continued and defeated effort to assign to every new phenomenon a place in familiar systems.

The principal result at which the writer had arrived when the paper was written was the opinion, advanced hypothetically in it, that the southern extremity of the Peninsula, &c., had been ruptured and upraised by subterraneous forces, and that through the rocks so affected No. VI. NEW SERIES.

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