PREFACE. INNUMERABLE volumes are extant, having reference to India. The history, geography, natural productions, and capabilities of the country, the language, manners, customs, and mythology of the Hindoos,—their commerce, laws, systems of agriculture, have engaged the pens of some scores of writers from the days of Tavernier and Bernier to the present hour. The great bulk and diversity, however, of these productions are, for the most part, unfavourable to the dissemination of a general knowledge of India in an age when the occupations of life put it out of the power of men to bestow leisure upon the perusal of works which do not relate to their immediate |
