of learning or a gaze less rigidly fixed on "business". Sir John
Marshall, Director General of Archaeology in India, continued very
kindly to permit me use of books after I had severed official connection
with his library at Simla. Dr. Spooner who acted for him obligingly saw
that as far as he was concerned no facilities were incontinently
withdrawn from me at Benmore. I have particularly to thank the Librarian
of the Imperial Library, Calcutta, who not only posted me books in his
charge but went out of his way to procure me others. Mrs. Besant and her
wealthy adherents have created at Adyar the atmosphere associated with
the Ashramas and the seats of learning in ancient India so finely
described by Chinese travellers. The Oriental Library there is
unsurpassed by any institution in British or Indian ruled India. It is
to be wished in the interests of pure scholarship that some one
succeeds--I did not--in prevailing on the President of the Theosophical
Society to lend books to scholars who may not be equal to the exertion
of daily travelling seven miles from Madras to Adyar. Her insistence on
a rigid imitation of British Museum rules in India, mainly because so
many of the Theosophical fraternity cut out pages and chapters from
books once allowed to be borrowed by them, inflicts indiscriminate
penalty on honest research and seals up against legitimate use books
nowhere else to be found in India.

I reserve for the Second Part of this book some observations on the
Russian language with reference to Orientalism, and Arabic and Persian
literatures in particular. Only after the outbreak of the War some
interest has been aroused in England in matters Russian generally and a
number of grammars and dictionaries and other aids to the study of this
most difficult language have recently been placed on the market for the
use of students who only a brief three years ago had to depend mainly on
German for acquisition of Russian. This neglect of Russian is wholly