Now that this task is complete, it is my duty to pay my debts
to individuals and institutions who made it possible; would that
all my duties were as pleasant! The Department of Religious
Studies and the Office for Research of Indiana University at
Bloomington supported this project with a variety of grants.
Few institutions provide a better environment for personal
growth and scholarly endeavors. My gratitude is heightened as
I prepare to leave them after a seventeen-year association to
join the University of Texas at Austin.

The Wolfson College of Oxford University provided unpar-
alleled resources and a beautiful environment during 1977-1978
and 1981-1982 to conduct research. The Bhandarkar Oriental
Research Institute in Poona and the Theosophical Society in
Adyar, Madras, were generous in accommodating even my most
unreasonable requests. Research at Oxford and in India was
supported by generous grants from the National Endowment
for the Humanities, the Smithsonian Institution, and the
American Institute of Indian Studies.

We owe an intellectual debt to all those from whose labors
we profit. They are too numerous to name; some of them will
appear frequently in the footnotes and the bibliography. To
two of them, however, I owe a special debt of gratitude. This

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