MY DEAR COWELL: As these Lectures would never have been written or
delivered but for your hearty encouragement, I hope you will now allow
me to dedicate them to you, not only as a token of my sincere
admiration of your great achievements as an Oriental scholar, but also
as a memorial of our friendship, now more than thirty years old, a
friendship which has grown from year to year, has weathered many a
storm, and will last, I trust, for what to both of us may remain of
our short passage from shore to shore.

I must add, however, that in dedicating these Lectures to you, I do
not wish to throw upon you any responsibility for the views which I
have put forward in them. I know that you do not agree with some of my
views on the ancient religion and literature of India, and I am well
aware that with regard to the recent date which I have assigned to the
whole of what is commonly called the Classical Sanskrit Literature, I
stand almost alone. No, if friendship can claim any voice in the
courts of science and literature, let me assure you that I shall
consider your outspoken criticism of my Lectures as the very best
proof of your true and honest friendship. I have through life
considered it the greatest honor if real scholars, I mean men not only
of learning, but of judgment and character, have considered my
writings worthy of a severe and searching criticism; and I have cared
far more for the production of one single new fact, though it spoke
against me, than for any amount of empty praise or empty abuse.
Sincere devotion to his studies and an unswerving love of truth ought
to furnish the true scholar with an armor impermeable to flattery or
abuse, and with a visor that shuts out no ray of light, from whatever
quarter it may come. More light, more truth, more facts, more
combination of facts, these are his quest. And if in that quest he
fails, as many have failed before him, he knows that in the search for
truth failures are sometimes the condition of victory, and the true
conquerors often those whom the world calls the vanquished.

You know better than anybody else the present state of Sanskrit
scholarship. You know that at present and for some time to come
Sanskrit scholarship means discovery and conquest. Every one of your
own works marks a real advance, and a permanent occupation of new
ground. But you know also how small a strip has as yet been explored
of the vast continent of Sanskrit literature, and how much