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PREFACE.

the stocks, but I cannot say when it will be ready for the press. I hope, if life and health are spared, to complete the work by a third volume, containing the verb and particles; but our official work seems to get heavier, and leisure to be more unattainable, day by day. My progress is therefore of necessity slow and uncertain, and many years must elapse before my task is finished.

John Beames.

Balasore, Orissa, September, 1871.


NOTE.

A list of the works which I have consulted is here inserted. Although, as I have said before, I have had comparatively little help from books, yet it is due to those living authors from whom I have derived any assistance to acknowledge the same.

Bopp: Comparative Grammar.
I used the French edition by Bréal. Paris, 1866.
Grimm: Deutsche Grammatik.
Grimm: Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache.
Trumpp: Das Sindhi im Vergleich sum Prákrit. Journal of German Oriental Society, vol. xv., p. 690.
Trumpp: Die Stammbildung des Sindhi. Ibid, vol. xvi., p. 177.
Two most valuable essays. I have taken some examples from them, but most of those which are identical with Dr. Trumpp's I had already collected for myself before I became acquainted with his works.
Weber: Ueber ein Fragment der Bhâgavatî. Transactions of Royal Academy of Sciences, Berlin, vol. i., 1865; vol. ii., 1866.
Weber: Saptaçatakam, Leipzig, 1870.
My thanks are due to the learned author for the immense benefit I have derived from the study of these two important treatises.
Cowell: The Prâkrita Prakâśa of Vararuchi.
This admirable edition of the leading work on Prakrit has been the basis of the present volume.
Bopp's Glossarium Comparativum, Westergaard's Radices Sanskriticæ, Benfey's Sanskrit Dictionary (I could not get Böhtlingk and Roth’s), Monier Williams’s English and Sanskrit Dictionary, Muir's Sanskrit Texts, vol. ii., and numerous articles scattered through the pages of the Journals of the various Asiatic Societies, have also been constantly referred to.

It is unnecessary to specify the dictionaries and grammars of the modern vernaculars. They are those in ordinary use, and for the most part very bad and defective, except Molesworth's splendid work and Shamacharan Sirkar's very complete and useful Bengali grammar.