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PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

On my return from my third visit to India in April 1884, I found nearly the whole of the first edition of the present work exhausted. I therefore at once set about preparing a second edition.

But let not any possessor of a copy of the first edition take alarm. I am happy to say that the general accuracy of everything I have written in that volume has been confirmed by the native authorities I have consulted during my recent travels. Still I must admit that I have been able to make some improvements and additions in the present edition, especially in appending a full index.

My travels embraced Bombay, Allahābād, Calcutta, Darjiling, Pārasnāth, Mirzapore, Patna, Gayā, Benares, Agra, Bulandshahr, Delhi, Jeypore (Jaypur), Ājmere, Ābū, Ahmedābād, and Baroda, but my object was not so much to verify what I had already written, as to collect information for the part of my work still unfinished.

In all the places I have named I met intelligent Pandits, many of whom discussed questions with me in Sanskrit. I found too that an increasing number were able to converse with me in excellent English; and I may mention that I derived much instruction.

from the conversations I had at Bombay with the Reverend Nehemiah Goreh, who is a converted Brahman attached to the Cowley Mission at Poona.

The able lectures he has delivered in India ought to be in the hands not only of every Missionary, but of every inquirer among the natives of India, whose faith in their own religion has been sapped by the secular education we impart at our Colleges and Universities.

I fear that the process of sifting the mass of notes and material I have collected during my late travels, combined with my lexicographical labours and other duties at Oxford, will make such demands on my time, that I shall be prevented from proceeding with that part of my task which relates to the other religions of India as rapidly as I had hoped; but I trust its publication will not be very long delayed.

M. W.

MERTON-LEA, Oxford.

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