"It is undoubtedly a surprising fact that down to the present time no historyof Sanskrit literature as a whole has been written in English. For not onlydoes that literature possess much intrinsic merit but the light it sheds on thelife and thought of the population of our Indian Empire ought to have apeculiar interest for the British nation. Owing chiefly to the lack of anadequate account of the subject few even of the young men who leavethese shores every year to be its future rulers possess any connectedinformation about the literature in which the civilisation of Modern Indiacan be traced to its sources and without which that civilisation cannot befully understood. It was therefore with the greatest pleasure that I accepted Mr. Gosse's invitation to contribute a volume to this series of Literatures of the World; for this appeared to me to be a peculiarly good opportunity fordiffusing information on a subject in which more than twenty years of continuous study and teaching had instilled into me an ever-deepeninginterest."