The author believes that it would be necessary for a student of Indian religions to undertake first of all a long and difficult investigation into sources and further that from the point of view of the study of religions what was wanted was not so much fresh study of individual books as a clear comprehensive survey of the literature so far as critical inquiry, translations and the publication of texts have made it known, so that the student might be able to begin the study of any part of it with intelligence and to find his way without serious difficulty to all the existing literature, modern as well as ancient, which deals with the section of the field in which he is interested.