It is believed that a work of this nature cannot be accomplished again. In any age it could not be done out of India for want of expert assistance. In India, even under the most favourable conditions, and when a student had acquired a knowledge of some Indian languages and dialects, the translation of the sacred books of the Sikhs, and the compilation of the lives of their Gurus and holy men, would be the work of years. No one while in the service of the Indian Government could find leisure to accomplish it; and few Europeans after their retirement from Indian service would care to spend long years and lonely lives in India wrestling with mediaeval Indian dialects and submitting to the caprices of gyanis; but even should such martyrs to the cause of science be found, they would not be able to obtain the requisite assistance, because the principal interpreters of the sacred books of the Sikhs will have passed away with this generation, and, owing to want of patronage, there will be none to supply their place. This fact, too, would soon render a Sikh, even if thoroughly acquainted with the English tongue, and possessed of sufficient resource and industry, incapable of producing an authoritative and exhaustive work in our language on his religion,

The preacher of old said that 'of making many books there is no end'. For the last century their publication has increased in geometrical ratio, and prodigious must be the number which find their way into the streets and shops which sell quicquid chartis anticitur ineptis. The author fondly hopes that this work, which contains an account of the last great religion of the world

{p. xxxiv}

which remains to be exploited, may escape the general fate. At the same time a glance at the shelves of any large library must convince a writer of the vanity of most literary labour, if haply the love of fame is dearer to him than the love of his subject. The blurred and hoary volumes, elaborately illuminated and bound, which no one now ever peruses, were often produced at the expense of years of toil--nay, of health and even life itself--and now remain sad monuments of the transitoriness of fame and the frequent futility of human effort. But there is even a worse fate than this, namely, the obloquy so often meted out to authors instead of the legitimate recompense of lives of strenuous toil devoted to literary or scientific investigation. Even under favourable circumstances the author of an elaborate work of this description, the production of which has occupied several years of his life, cannot always hope even for temporary reward in the approbation of those dear to him, those whom he would wish to please; for either their measure of years has grown full, or separation and varied interests have dulled the feelings of mutual pleasure which would result from his success.

MAX ARTHUR MACAULIFFE.

ROYAL SOCIETIES CLUB,

LONDON.

{p. xxxv}

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