It is to be hoped that when a second edition is called for of that German work, Dr. M. Winternitz will not be slow to avail himself of the materials afforded by the Agamas, and thereby add to the post-Vedic chapters of his book. At the same time, it is clear that Dr. Paul Deussen, another German Sanskritist and metaphysician of superb accom plishments and talents, gives indications of a knowledge of the Saiva-darsana. In his masterly digest of the Monistic Idealism of Sankara, published in German, Das System des Vedanta, Zweite Auflage, he refers to the Bhashya of Srlkantha on the Brahma-Sutras (the related portions were translated by me from German into English for the Brahmavadin in 1907-08), and in his more recent work, on the post-Vedic Philosophy, issued in the same European language, Allgemeine Geschichte der Philosophie, Erster Band, Dritte Abteilung, Die nachvedische Philosophic der Indcr, he devotes a chapter to the Saiva-darsana. There is however nothing to show that Prof. Deussen has dived into the Agamic literature at first-hand, as he has for instance, done, into the Aupanishadic, in the course of his descent into the wells of the ancient Aryan Monism. Further, the Agamas have their own interpretations to offer as regards the cardinal precepts and teachings of the archaic Upanishats, and hence a thorough grounding in the Agamas, and in such of the Puranas as have visibly felt the influence of, or been nurtured on the same soil as, the Agamas, will altogether place the student on a new standpoint, and the Aupanishadic teachings in a new perspective, that is to say, in a setting that will be different to what has till now been considered, by the orthodox school of European orientalists, as the purely Vedantic view of the entire arcanum or scheme of Indian metaphysics.

Consequently, an independent study of the Agamas, untrammelled by any prior predilections, will prove of inestimable value to those orientalists who would be glad to investigate de novo whether the Aupanishadic teachings will not bear any other philosophic interpretation than the one accorded to it heretofore by the so-called accepted schools of Hindu philosophy. Again, in the last important work that Max Muller published previous to his death, The Six Systems of Indian Philosophy, though there are indications that he knew of the existence of the Agamanta in both Sanskrit and Tamil, there is nothing to show that he went into, or was conversant with, the details of the Saiva-darsana as developed in the Divyagamas. Dr. Georg Buhler had, it is said, an idea of making quite a study of the treatises in Sanskrit that were based on the Agamas, as far as they concerned the Spanda and the Pratyabhijna phases of the Saiva-darsana, but his loss came off all too soon in 1898. And so, Dr. L. D. Barnett is perhaps the only extant European orientalist that has for some years past been taking an abiding interest in the study of the literature relative to the Saiva-darsana in Sanskrit, and it must be said to his lasting credit that he is not only a thoroughgoing Sanskrit scholar, but is also an accomplished student of the Dravidian vernaculars, and his writings bear an unmistakable stamp of very good acquaintance with the works bearing on most of the phases of the Agamanta, to wit, the Pratyabhijna, the Vira Saiva and the Suddha Saiva (the parent of the system developed by Meykandan in Tamil). He has translated into English the Paramarthasara of Abhinavagupta (a Pratyabhijna work), and edited other Saiva works in Sanskrit. Another Pratyabhijna work, by name Sivasutravimarsini, has recently been englished by Mr. P. T. Srinivasa Ayyangar. Dr. Wilhelm Jahn seems to take a lively interest in Agamic research, (Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlandischen Geselischaft, Band lxv, pp. 380 et seq.y q. v)., which imports great future possibilities therefor at his hands, and Dr. F. Otto Schrader will not be long in coming out with an edition of the Maharthamanjari (a Pratyabhijna work), to which I have been desired to append an English translation, with critical and exegetical notes.

The task of continuing the translation of the Mrigendra-Agama from the point where Mr. M. K. Narayanasvami Aiyar left it, has devolved on me as a matter of friendly office, and though I have not been able to make any large progress with the continuation, by interruptions of an unlooked-for description, yet, it is hoped that the entire translation may soon be ready. A totally new translation into English of Nilakantha's Brahma-Sutra-Bhashya, with Appaya's Sivarkamanidipika which is its elaborate scholium in Sanskrit, has already been undertaken by me, but, it will, in any case, take some time to finish it. That translation will be fortified with rich critical apparatus, illustrative and explanatory notes, and special introductions in which a digest, in English, of the essential portions of most of the Agamas now available, will, for the first time, be unreservedly incorporated. The above is all that may be said to have been achieved, or to be near within an ace of achievement, in the matter of the elucidation of the Saiva-darsana.

On the purely expositional side, the doctrines of the Agamas have found a reverent and apt interpreter in the scholar-sage Mr. P. Ramanathan, whose writings it is not possible to surpass either in this peninsula or beyond, for either clarity of thought or directness of appeal. But, unfortunately for scholars, he has not chosen to write on the subject more often or copiously than his writings would lead the reader to expect. On the other hand, the literature and the mysticism of the Agamas have also had their share of travesty and mockery, in a new-fangled work on Indian Philosophy, recently brought out by Mr. P. T. Srinivasa Ayyangar. The last production is a curious mixture of laborious learning and hoaxing horse-play which will neither appeal to the scholarly philosopher nor the humour-loving general reader. Save for some bibliographical bits of varied character and uncertain authority, the book is a failure as a genuine resume of the factors that enter into the constitution of the many mystic and metaphysical cults that have over run the post-Vedic India; and worst of it all, the chapters of the book, relative to the Agamas and the Saiva-darsana, are vitiated, in places, by gross misinterpretations, and, in others, by mistakes of fact begotten of the direst ignorance.