تحقيق ما للهند (Al-Biruni's India — Sachau edition, BnF)

of Islam, he admired the acuteness of the Indian mind and its productions in art and literature. Acting on the principle that those who want to meet the Hindus on the battle-ground of intellectual warfare and to deal with them in the spirit of justice and equanimity must first learn all that is peculiar to them in manners and customs as well as in their general modes of thought, he produced a comprehensive description of Indian civilization, always struggling to grasp its very essence and depicting it with due lights and shades as an impartial spectator. The title of the book, the awkwardness of which seems to arise from the punctiliousness of a delicate conscience, runs as follows: »An accurate description of all categories of Hindu thought, as well those which are admissible as those which must be rejected«, i.e., Kitāb Abī al-Rayḥān Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Bīrūnī fī taḥqīq mā lil-Hind min maqūla maqbūla fī al-ʿaql aw mardhūla The Book of Abu Rayhan Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Biruni on the Verification of what India has to say, whether it is acceptable by reason or rejected.

No doubt, much of the subject matter of the book, if not all, was perfectly new to the Muhammadan readers of the time. But will it be able to teach something new about India also to the learned Europe of our century after the unparalleled progress which Sanskrit and Indian studies in general have made since the days of Sir William Jones? Apart from his own opinion, the editor is entitled to state that it was specialists, Sanskrit scholars, who never wearied in proclaiming the desirability of its being edited and translated. Ever since a few portions were made known, they have been largely and conscientiously used by Sanskrit scholars, who never, even when contradicting the author, denied him the deference due to a first-rate authority in historic matters. And we are inclined to believe that the fame and credit of Albêrûnî will greatly increase, after his immortal work has been now, for the first time in its entirety and in the form in which it left his pen, laid before the learned world.

A clear cut through the different strata of the earth's crust teaches the geologist its origin, the history of its development, its past, its present, and its future. In a similar way the work of Herodotus, the Germania of Tacitus, and the Indica of Albêrûnî afford, as it were, a clear cut through the stratification of the Greek-Oriental, Teutonic, and Indian civilizations of their times. If these authors show us what they found and how they found it, it is our task to investigate how it had attained to that stage and what was its subsequent development. When Tacitus wrote, the Teutonic tribes were still in very primitive conditions; they had not yet learnt from their Roman masters the art of making successful wars and of founding large states, and Irish and other missionaries had not yet appeared among them to sow the first seeds of Christian civilization. When Herodotus travelled in the east, the specific civilizations of both Egypt and Western Asia looked already back upon a long course of national development which had extended over hun-