I have great pleasure in releasing to the public the first volume of the Proceedings of the twenty sixth international Congress of Orientalists It was our hope that this volume would be available by the end of 1965 but those who have experience of publishing a book with contributions from scholars from many different countries know that with the best effort of both contributors and editors, all articles are not received in time In fact, sometimes one article alone may and does hold up the entire publication.

The editors have faced these difficulties valiantly and I understand that most of the material for the second volume also is already in hand. The third and the fourth volumes deal with, Indology, Islamic Studies and ether Asian subjects where in addition to difficulties of the contents, there are additional problems posed by the need to print different texts in rare and in some cases extinct alphabets. Nevertheless, out effort will be to publish the remaining three volumes before the end of 1967. The press has offered every cooperation in overcoming difficulties posed by strange and unfamiliar scripts and I am confident that it will squre no effort to get the work completed within the specified date

The XXVI session of the Congress had certain features which distinguish it from earlier sessions. It was mainly the initiative of Sir William Jones and the then Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal which started a sustained and scientific interest in Oriental lore. Indology was perhaps the core of these studies in their initial stages and as such the session of the congress in India was like a long awaited homecoming Another.

feature of this Congress was the number of nationalities represented among the delegates and the Chairmen of the different Sections. We have tried to make the record as complete as possible and names of all institutions and delegates communicated to us officially have been included. We regret that in spite of our best efforts, names of some institutions and delegates may yet have been left out.

It was not easy to decide which papers should be included in the Proceedings. Even with the utmost pruning, the publication will run to about a thousand pages. That the work could at all be done is due to the unstinted cooperation of the Chairmen of the different Sections who indicated which papers were to be included in full and which only in abstract. Theirs was a difficult task and I would like to thank them on behalf of the Congress as well as the Organising Committee. I would also like to record my gratefulness to the editors for the manner in which they have carried out the necessary but tedious task of editing papers, comparing texts and reading proofs. Finally, I must thank the printers for the way in which they have cooperated in bringing out this volume and hope that they will show the same interest and care in publishing the succeeding volumes as early as possible.

The activities of the XXVI International Congress of Orientalists will come to an end only when the full proceedings are published. Since this is only the first of four volumes, I cannot say that our work is over but the Organising Committee of the XXVII Congress has already been constituted and the centre of interest will now shift to its activities. I present this volume to the Orientalists of the world to mark the beginning of the end of the XXVI Congress.