A History of Indian Literature v1.c7.s2.44

v1.c7.s2.44

So much indeed has the amount of Indian Literature, which has become known, gradually increased, that now-a-days it is hardly possible any more for *one* scholar to master all the provinces of the same, and that the necessity arose for giving in one work an encyclopaedic view of everything which has, up till now, been done in the separate branches of Indology. For this work which has been appearing since the year 1897² under the title "Grundriss der indo-arischen Philologie und Altertumskunde" (Encyclopaedia of Indo-aryan Philology and Archaeology) the plan was drawn up by Georg Bühler, the greatest and most versatile Sanskrit scholar of the last decades. Thirty scholars from Germany, Austria, England, Holland, India and America banded themselves together, in order to compile the separate parts of this work, first under the editorship of Bühler—afterwards under that of Franz Kielhorn and now under that of H. Lüders and J. Wackernagel. The publication of this, "Grundriss" is at one and the same time the latest and most welcome, as well as most important, event in the history of the development of Indology. If we wish to compare the knowledge of India and its literature as laid down in the volumes of this "Grundriss" which have appeared up till now, with that which Lassen was able to record in his "Indische Altertumskunde" only a few decades before, then we can look with just pride at the progress which science has made in a comparatively short period of time.