Noble-minded and learned Sirs! may health and prosperity be ever present with you! Kindly receive the expression of my homage and devotion. O men of knowledge, the ancient Sanskṛit language is at the present day like an aged mother shorn of her beauty and bereft of her ornaments. For a long time, alas! she has remained unhonoured, and now flees to you well-disposed scholars for protection. In the sharpness of her grief she laments with a heart-rending cry of pain. Listen attentively, that her feeble cry of suffering may enter your ears.