Part 3 - Acknowledgments

The publication of these volumes has been made possible through the generosity of the Secretary of State for India, the Government of India, and the Government of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, to whom I can only express inadequately my most respectful thanks. To Professor F. W. Thomas, c.i.e., m.a., ph.d. the then Librarian of India Office, London, I owe most of the materials and general guidance at the early stage of my undertaking: words fail me to express ray indebtedness to him.

In addition to the assistance already acknowledged, my gratitude is duo to Rai Bahadur Dayaram Sahni, m.a., the present Director General of Archaeology, for his scholarly interest in the work and the friendly appreciation for the past ten years, and to Mr. K. N. Dikṣit, m.a., the then Deputy Director General of Archaeology, who used to come to my hotel and spent hours in discussing various obstinate passages which baffled repeated attempts at their interpretation, and who also very generously reviewed the earlier volumes. For his scholarly sympathy and generous appreciation my grateful acknowledgement is due to Mr. H. R. Harrop, m.a., I.E.S., the Deputy Director of Public Instruction. His interest increased through his official correspondence during the past ten years concerning the publication with the Oxford University Press, who, incidentally, have been anxious since the first year of their publication to bring out a second edition of my Dictionary and Indian Architecture.

For his very encouraging and generous review of the earlier volumes and for affording me all facilities to undertake extensive tours year after year, I shall ever remain grateful to one of the greatest orientialists, Mahamahopadhyaya Pandit Ganganath Jha, M.A., D.Latt., LL.D., until recently Vice-Chancellor of Allahabad University. To my esteemed colleague, Professor C.D. Thompson, m.a., the head of our Economies Department, I am grateful for many linguistic and textual improvements of the architectural section, the penultimate proof of which he revised with great interest. I am grateful to another amateur archaeologist, Mr. P. C. Barat, B.A., for comparing some proofs and suggesting certain improvements; and to Messrs. S. C. Mukherji and N. K. Dasgupta, M.A., B.L., for their valuable assistance in arranging and comparing the index slips, which I prepared myself. My gratitude is due to my colleagues of the Sanskrit Department, Dr. B. R. Saksena, M.A., D.Litt., Dr. Umesh Misra, M.A., D.Litt., Pandit K. Chattopadhyaya. M.A., and Pandit Raghubar Mithulal Shastri, M.A., M.O.L., for their scholarly interest, friendly sympathy, encouraging appreciation, and various assistance from time to time. Not only for general encouragement, but also for valuable suggestions and constructive criticism of the earlier volumes, I am grateful to the reviewers whose opinions are quoted at the end of this volume.

Like many other people, my gratitude is duo to Shrimant Bala Shahib Pant Pratinidhi, b.a., the renowned Ruler of Oundh who has done so much to revive our ancient culture and to unfold our artistic treasures. He has taken a very great interest in the publication of the Mānasāra and intends to build a house according to the direction of this standard Śilpa-śāstra.

Last, but not least, I am pleased to acknowledge my grateful thanks to Mr. D. W. Crighton and his staff for their ever sympathetic and kind treatment towards me and for their patient and careful handling which was necessary in bringing out a volume like this. For his personal interest in the work and for many useful suggestions and improvements I am further indebted to Mr. Crighton, who readily took the trouble of revising this Preface.

But for a very special reason it would be rather unusual to give publicity to and acknowledge with grateful recollection the indirect assistance, indispensable as it has been, received from one’s own people. Miss Śakti Chatterjoe, who was educated in a convent school for girls at Shillong, though connected with Dr. Rabindranath Tagore, had acquired no artistic skill when she became my wife in 1923. Since our marriage, however, the traditional love of the Tagore family for arts, which may have been latent in her, came to help me immensely. She suddenly developed an enthusiasm for the completion of these volumes and contented herself with a sort of desertion during all these long years because I had almost wedded myself to the Mānasāra and had to give to this task all the attention and time, even during Sundays and long vacations, which could be spared from the strenuous duties of the Professor of a University (newly reconstructed into a residential institution for the first time in India), of the Head of a department of classics in these days of science, and the Dean of a Faculty including some thousand students and some hundred teachers of all ranks and of all temperaments. But for her enthusiasm these volumes, comprising some three thousand pages of crown quarto size, could not have been published in another ton years’ time, for my own patience and temper, as well as my eyesight, were put to a severe trial in doing everything single-handed in one stretch, without taking any leave or holiday since the work was begun in 1914.