The period covered by the inception, the publication, and the completion of the Sacred Books of tile East exactly coincides with the thirty-four years that I have spent in Oxford. When I matriculated, Professor Max Muller, the editor of the series, was about to begin work on the first volume, which appeared while I was still an undergraduate.
I lost no time in making his acquaintance, for it was the influence of one of his works that had stimulated me to begin under Professor Benfey the study of Sanskrit at the University of Gottingen, when I left school nearly two years before. During my undergraduate days and later I owed much to Professor Max Muller's advice and encouragement in regard to my studies, which have ever since followed, as far as Sanskrit is concerned, much the same lines as his.
I consequently always took a lively interest in the Sacred Books edited by him as they successively appeared during the course of a quarter of a century) no fewer than thirty-six volumes having a more or less direct bearing on my own work, and fourteen of the translators being personally known to me. Professor Max Muller lived to see all but one of the forty-nine volumes published under his supervision. Now the fiftieth and concluding volume is at last finished when I myself have already arrived at advanced middle age. Owing to my early relations with the editor and my interest in the series ever since, I am glad to have this opportunity of accompanying with a few words by way of preface the volume that brings the series to an end.
The Sacred Books of the East include all the most important works of the seven non-Christian religions that have exercised a profound influence on the civilization of the continent of Asia. Of the Indian religions the Vedic-Brah-manic system here claims twenty-one volumes, Buddhism ten, and Jainism two. Eight volumes comprise translations of the sacred books of the Persians. Two volumes represent Islam, and six the two main indigenous systems of China, Confucianism and Taoism. This great undertaking, planned and edited by Professor Max Muller, has been carried out by the collaboration of twenty scholars, all leading authorities in the special departments of Oriental teaming to which the works translated by them belong.
By thus rendering these religious systems accessible as a whole to the Western world in authoritative translations, Professor Max Muller for the first time placed the historical and comparative study of religions on a solid foundation. But with that large view of the aims and needs of scholarship which distinguished him, he saw that the investigation of the vast material here collected could not become thoroughly effective without the auxiliary aid of a separate index volume presenting that material thoroughly digested and exhaustively classified.
This work he entrusted to Dr. Winternitz, who at that time was resident in Oxford and had been assisting him in bringing out his second edition of the Rigveda with the commentary of Sayana, The result, after various unavoidable delays, is the present volume, in which the end in view has been most successfully accomplished by the compiler, now Professor of Indian Philology and of Ethnology in the German University of Prague.
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