PREFACE.

IN one way or another I have maintained a continuous connection with India since my birth, which occurred at Calcutta in the days when the "voyage home" was made "round the Cape." During my school-days in England, India was the residence of my parents, and of the parents of many of my comrades. It was the land whence came bronzed and bearded men, who gave us sovereigns and cricket-bats, and brought messages from the fathers and mothers who in too many instances had become mere memories of the vaguest kind.

Chance, or more likely the mysterious attraction India has for the sons of fathers who have served her, drew me back to that country in early manhood. During a sojourn of several years I traveled from point to point, as duty dictated or pleasure prompted, and in that way a great deal of the vast area of India was covered, and most of its principal cities were visited.

Thus it happens that in the composition of the greater part of these volumes I have had the advantage of knowledge derived from personal observation. For the rest I have availed myself of the experiences of others, as narrated in person, or through the medium of the most recent books, from which desirable material has been freely drawn.

In the belief that the reader whose chief aim is entertainment dislikes the distraction of frequent footnotes, they have been avoided as much as possible. In many cases where quotations appear, no reference is made to their sources; but whenever an extract contains a statement of importance, the name of the author has been connected with it. Indian words are defined when such explanation is necessary to an understanding of the context; otherwise such definitions have been relegated to the Glossary, which, it is hoped, will be found sufficiently complete to meet the needs of the studious, as well as of the casual, reader.

Considered from any point of view, India is a vast subject. Its history, its people, its architecture, its physical features-any one of these might be treated to the extent of two such volumes as the present. Far from experiencing any difficulty on the score of lack of material, I have been mainly concerned as to what to omit. While endeavoring to make my scope as wide as possible, I have restricted my effort to the production of a sketch which shall give a general impression of the country in all its

aspects, without any pretence to the fullness of detail one would look for in a technical work.

India is a land of strange contrasts, not the least striking of these being the immutability of its social institutions as compared with the constant changes in its political conditions. Caste, religion, and the customs growing out of them, are to-day, in their essential features, what they were in the remote past. In these respects a century in the Orient is but as a decade of Western civilization. The progress of the past hundred years in India has equaled that of all previous time.

On the other hand, the history of India is a record of unceasing turmoil. Wave upon wave, the sea of hostile invasion has inundated the land. Its capitals have been shaken by revolution time and again; new rulers have risen in sudden strength and old dynasties have disappeared as dew before the sun. But through all the shiftings of the political kaleidoscope the masses have slumbrously pursued their way, ignorant perhaps, or at any rate reckless, of the fortunes of their over-lords. Not in the people, then, do we trace the course of past events, but in the buildings which form connecting links between distant centuries. Hardly a temple or palace in the country but is rich in historical associations.

By supplementing description with history and tradition, I have endeavored to tell the story of India in outline; not completely as to detail, but as a con

sistent whole. Each locality has been treated in the light of the past, as well as of the present, and, indeed, in such close touch are Past and Present in India that no other view is possible. With slight change, the background of scenery is the same to-day as when Bábar's host overran the valley of the Ganges, or when Sivají devastated the Deccan.

If the book affords pleasant entertainment, and leaves the reader with a fairly clear and comprehensive picture of India and its people, the object with which it was written will have been attained.

C. H. F-L.

PHILADELPHIA, October 1st, 1903.