Caste in India: The Facts and the System c3: Translator's Note
Caste in India: The Facts and the System c3
- Language
- English
Translator's Note
c3.1
I N making the present translation, for which I assume full responsibility, I have received much help from Miss Ivy Clegg and Miss Elizabeth Symes, and this I am anxious to acknowledge. Much of the arduous spadework has been done by these ladies, but such are the difficulties to be met with in almost every page of this work, due to M. Senart's peculiarities of style and his close reasoning, that in a great number of cases the literal rendering had often to be discarded in favour of a paraphrase. I only trust that in the process of attempting to make this important work intelligible to the English reader no single point made by its learned author has been missed.
c3.2
I have also to acknowledge further help from Dr. L. D. Barnett of the British Museum and Professor R. L. Turner of the School of Oriental Studies, who have kindly gone through this translation in proof and made valuable suggestions. Being no Sanskritist myself, I felt it only right to invite the aid of these well-known scholars.
c3.3
That I should have undertaken this task at all is due mainly to my desire to pay a tribute to a very great French scholar and a valued friend of long standing. If further justification be needed I would claim that fourteen years' residence in Bengal has at least given me some first-hand acquaintance with the workings of the caste system in general.
c3.4
It was during the first year of my sojourn in India that I became acquainted with M. Senart's famous essay, thanks to the late Sir Herbert Risley, so often referred to in its pages, who held it in the highest esteem.
c3.5
E. DENISON ROSS
c3.6
November 1929