wards a future translation of the whole of the Rig-Veda. There are many scholars in England, Germany, France, and India who now devote their energies to the deciphering of Vedic words and Vedic thoughts; in fact, there are few Sanskrit scholars at present who have not made the Veda the principal subject of their studies. With every year, with every month, new advances are made, and words and thoughts, which but lately seemed utterly unintelligible, receive an unexpected light from the ingenuity of European students. Fifty years hence I hope that my own translation may be antiquated and forgotten. No one can be more conscious of its shortcomings than I am. All I hope is that it may serve as a step leading upwards to a higher, clearer, truer point of view, from which those who come after us may gain a real insight into the thoughts, the fears, the hopes, the doubts, the faith of the true ancestors of our race;-of those whose language still lives in our own language, and whose earliest poetical compositions have been preserved to us for more than three thousand years, in the most surprising, and, to my mind, the most significant manner.

OXFORD, January, 1867.

MAX MÜLLER.

The present publication is intended to form eight volumes, of about twenty-five sheets each, containing an English translation, notes, and explanatory essays. A transliterated text (in the original Pada form) will be added in order to obviate the necessity of quoting a whole passage again and again in the various notes on the same verse. The first volume will be published as soon as a sufficient number of subscribers has been obtained. Not more than two volumes to be published in each year.

Terms of Subscription before publication, 10s. 6d. per volume-the price to Non-subscribers after publication will be 12s. 6d. per volume.

TRÜBNER & Co., 60, Paternoster Row, London.