page 9 note * Mr. Ward has given, in the fourth volume of his View of the History, Literature, and Mythology of the Hindus (third edition), a translation of the Védánta-sára. I wish to speak as gently as I can of Mr, Ward's performance; but having collated this, I am bound to say it is no version of the original text, and seems to have been made from an oral exposition through the medium of a different language, probably the Bengalese. This will be evident to the oriental scholar on the slightest comparison: for example, the introduction, which does not correspond with the original in so much as a single word, the name of the author's preceptor alone excepted; nor is there a word of the translated introduction countenanced by any of the commentaries. At the commencement of the treatise, too, where the requisite qualifications of a student are enumerated, Mr. Ward makes his author say, that a person possessing those qualifications is heir to the véda (p. 176). There is no term in the text, nor in the commentaries, which could suggest the notion of heir; unless Mr. Ward has so translated adhicárí (a competent or qualified person), which in Bengalese signifies proprietor, or, with the epithet uttara (uttarádhicárí), heir or successor. It would be needless to pursue the comparison further. The meaning of the original is certainly not to be gathered from such translations of this and (as Mr. Ward terms them) of other principal works of the Hindus, which he has presented to the public.
I was not aware, when preparing the former essays on the Philosophy of the Hindus which have been inserted in the first volume of Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society, that Mr. Ward had treated the same topics: but I think it now unnecessary to revert to the subject, for the purpose of offering any remarks on his explanation of other branches of Indian philosophy.
