PREFACE
The precept of Horace, nonum premattir in annum, has been more than obeyed in this volume, for it was on November 3, 1901, that I began the translation of the Vdsavadattd. From that day Subandhu's romance has never been long absent from my thoughts, although many practical exigencies, some of them not wholly agreeable to a scholar, have forced me again and again to lay the task aside, often for six months at a stretch. Yet these clouds, too, have had their silver lining, for not only has my work thus had time to ripen, but much has appeared bearing on the novel during these intervals, or has been called to my attention by friends. The first draft of the translation was, for example, almost completed when, in March, 1903, Dr. George C. O. Haas noted for me an entry in a catalogue of Stechert, of New York, which enabled me to purchase a copy of the edition of the Vdsavadattd printed in Telugu script at Madras in 1862. This necessitated a renewed study of the text in comparison with the edition of Hall, and ultimately led me to include a transliteration of the 'southern' recension in my work, together with the variants of all the other editions. Some of these would have been inaccessible to me, had it not been for the courtesy of the India Office, which, at the instance of Mr. F. W. Thomas, its librarian, most generously loaned me the texts I needed, so that I might use them at leisure in my own study.
Excepting the blank-verse renderings of the few Sanskrit stanzas of the Vdsavadattd, I have sought to make the translation as literal as the English language would permit, and throughout I have spared no pains to facilitate reference to the original text, as well as to explain each allusion that I could elucidate. In the latter regard I have considered others than professed Sanskritists, for I have ventured to hope that some copies of the work may
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