पान:रानडे इंग्रजी-मराठी शब्दकोश खंड पहिला (The Twentieth century English-Marathi Dictionary Volume 1).pdf/10

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PREFACE

The object of the Twentieth Century English-Marathi Dictionary, Literary, Scientific and Technical is to make accessible, to the great bulk of the people in India who are ignorant of English, the fruits of Western Literature and Science which are at present inaccessible to them, being treasured up in the English language.


In the Educational Despateh of Lord Halifax (1854 ), a pledge was given to us, the people of India, by the East India Company that our vernaculars, along with the English language, would be made the media of instruction in the public schools of our country. when a suitable opportunity offered itself. But, in tho earlier decades of the British Rule in India men, learned in some one or more departments of European Literature and Science, were not available: nor wore available books, either Translations or Original Works, suitable for the purpose. Now. however, things are vastly changed.

Period of Transition.


{{text-indent|2em|When two civilisations of two different types meet together, for some time there is a period of Translation, each giving to the other that which the other needs. It is the period of Translation that always goes before the period of Original Composition. We, in India, after 50 years of University Education, now have reached the borderland between these two periods. The period of Translation will soon become a matter of the past, and from it, will emerge the period of Original Composition. In other words, we have roached the line of Transition from Translation to Original Composition; and it is high time that the vernacular scientific terms, that here come into being during the last sixty years by the isolated and spasmodic efforts of vernacular scientific writers, be examined, standardised and accorded a permanent place in an Anglo-Vernacular Scientific Lexicon, to facilitate the production of vernaoular scientific literatures in the country.2

Preliminary Steps.

The corm of the idea of this work first took shape in 1893. From 1893 to 1898. I utilised every opportunity to develop this germ into an embryonic condition. In 1898 I got a clear vision of the difficulties and responsibilities of this enterprise and in the same year I at once sketched out a complete programme, kept & regular office, employed & staff of Assistants, and upto 1903 engaged myself in collecting materials that lay scattered in several old and now works marking out gaps in the terminology of each science for filling them in with, coinagas. During this period I visited the o visited Chemical and Physical Laboratories, the Pathological Museum, the Anatomical Museum, the Botanic Museum, the Botanical and Zoological Gardens, the Astronomical Observatory, Mechanical Workshops, various Mills, etc., to study personally several Physical and Astronomical instruments, Anatomical models. Pathological specimens, living plants and animals, etc.

Eighteen Years' research.

The manuscript was begun in the early spring of 1898. The first 1. the third and the fourth, in 1905; the fifth, in 1906; the sixth, in out in 1903; the second, in 1904; the eighth, in 1909; the ninth, in 1910; the tenth, in 1911; the eleventh, in 1912: the twelfth, in 1914; the thirteenth and the fourteenth, in 1915; and the fifteenth and the sixteenth, in 1916. The whole work is, thus, a fruit of 18 years' labour and research.