individuals. Bombay, perhaps the wealthiest town in the East where
prosperous Musalmans form a most important factor of its population, has
not one public library containing any tolerable collection of Arabic
books edited in Europe. Time after time wealthy Parsis whose interest I
enlisted have received from me lists of books to form the nucleus of an
Arabic library but apparently they need some further stimulus to
appreciate how indispensable Arabic is for research into Iranian
antiquities. The Bombay Government have expended enormous sums in
collecting Sanskrit manuscripts--a most laudable pursuit--and have
published a series of admirable texts edited by some of the eminent
Sanskrit scholars, Western and Indian. But the numerous Moslem Anjumans
do not appear to have demonstrated to the greatest Moslem Power in the
world, or its representative in Bombay, the necessity of a corresponding
solicitude for Arabic and Persian treasures which undoubtedly exist,
though to a lesser extent, in the Presidency. And what holds true of
Bombay holds good in case of the rest of India. Some of the libraries in
Upper India in Hyderabad, Rampur, Patna, Calcutta possess along with
manuscript material cheap mutilated Egyptian reprints of magnificent
texts brought out in Leiden, Paris and Leipzig. Nowhere in India is
available to a research scholar a complete set of European publications
in Arabic, which a few thousand rupees can purchase. The state of
affairs is due to Moslem apathy, politics claiming a disproportionate
share of their civic energy, to Government indifference and to some
extent Parsi supineness and prejudice which, despite the community's
vaunted advancement, has failed to estimate at its proper worth their
history as enshrined in the language of the pre-judged Arab.

Moulvi Muhammad Ghulam Rasul Surti, of Bombay, himself a scholar, lent
me from his bookshop expensive works which few private students could
afford to buy. No western book-seller could have conceived a purer love