Brihat Samhita of Varahamihira

selves nor will they allow foreigners to interfere with their sacred literature.And not without reason; it may not be out of place to quote here a little from Louis Jacolliot’s “Bible in India” : "The Reverend Fathers, Jesuits, Franciscans, Stranger-missions and other corporations unite with touching harmony in India to accomplish a work of Vandalism, which it is right to denounce as well to the learned world as to Orientalists. Every manuscript, every Sanscrit work that falls into their hands, is immediately condemned and consigned to the flames. Needless to say that the choice of these gentlemen always falls from preference upon those of highest antiquity, and whose authenticity may appear incontestable."

"Every new arrival receives a formal order, so to dispose of all that may fall into his hands. Happily the Brahmins do not open to them the secret stores of their immense literary wealth, philosophic and religious".

The public can therefore do much if their eyes could only be opened to the importance of the subject. Most of the English knowing natives hardly know what these books treat of. I have many a time astonished young Collegians and graduates by quoting from Hindu astronomers and mathematicians, and they were surprised to find that the Aryans knew what the Europeans know forgetting that these sciences were taken to the west from here.It may be mentioned here, in passing, that these Sciences, so much neglected by the State, stand a fair chance of being revived as, at my suggestion a Sanskrit Mathematical class has recently been opened in the Maharajah’s free Sanskrit College, Tiruvadi, Tanjore District, and placed under the management of Brahma Sree Sunderaswara Srouthy, Hindu Astronomer and Almanac publisher.

Now it has come to my knowledge that in many Hindu families whole libraries, for want of inspection, are now being feasted on by moths and white ants and large quantities have already been emptied into the dustbins, the decay having gone too far I know that at this moment over 50 books are being exposed to sun and rain in a wellknown family here and I hear they have remained in that state for over four years. This meritorious act is no doubt due to the circumstance that the present owners of the books have begun to taste the sweets of English education, while their ancestors appear to have been men of learning. My attempts to rescue them from further ruin proved a complete failure. The books appear to have, by a peculiar process, melted together and formed into one brittle mass. Similar injuries to Aryan literature are more or less going on all over India. English education, like Aaron’s rod, appears to have devoured up every other education and it has spread now throughout the land.