manners, a strong affinity with the widely different countries on either side of it; it partakes largely of the religious characteristics both of Western Asia, whence it has received Mahomedanism, and of Eastern Asia, to which it has given Buddhism, the pure outcome of Hindu theosophy; and it has preserved specimens of almost every stage in the history of Asiatic politics and the growth of Asiatic societies. No single first class country of Asia, therefore, so well repays examination; and it is just this part of Asia in which Europeans have had incomparably the best opportunities of accurate and continuous observation. The English know India as no other Europeans, since the Romans, have ever known an Asiatic country; in the long territorial struggle of modern times between Europe and Asia, their command of the sea enabled them to turn the flank of India's land defences, and by pushing up from the coast to establish themselves in the heart of Asia, at a time when the Cross and the Crescent were still contending fiercely on the Danube and the Caspian. Having thus occupied large provinces of Asia for more than a century, the English have been obliged, in building up their administration and consolidating their successive conquests, to look closely into the social and economical conditions of India, to consider the feelings of the people and to realize their political and religious idiosyncrasies; with the general result that by opening out India they have let a flood of clear daylight in upon. Asia at large. The present small volume may possibly add something to the English store of information derived from Eastern experiences; it may aid toward the exact appreciation of Indian life and thought, and to a knowledge, through India, of Asia; and it may perhaps contribute materials of some

special use to those who are engaged in the comparative study of religious and social phenomena generally. There may be nothing new in the ideas, to which reference is constantly made in this volume, that India, with its multiplicity of religions and tribes, and its variety of political groups, is the best surviving specimen, on a large scale, of the ancient world of history, the Orbis veteribus notus; and that the provincial administration as well as the foreign policy of the Roman empire are reproduced, in several notable respects, by our system of government in India. The conception is, of course, aided by the analogies to be found between the position of the Romans in some of their proconsulates and legations, and that of Englishmen in Bengal or in the Punjab; the administrative problems that arise are much the same, and they are often solved in a similar manner; insomuch that for the cases before our courts we can sometimes find very close precedents in those recorded as having been placed before Roman procurators or prefects. The consequence is that these ideas are continually recurring to the mind of any one who attempts to survey India at the present day, and to understand in what state the English found the country, and what they are now doing there. All such resemblances and comparisons help to bridge over the distance between the ancient and the modern world, and to give more distinct and familiar proportions to scenes and figures which appear strange and beyond our own experience when we read of them in history. We begin to feel the true religious atmosphere of past ages, and to realize their political aspects. We see that the polytheism of India still flows from sources and assumes shapes similar to those which produced the beliefs and worships of præ-Christian Europe; and we understand more clearly the situation that is created whenever a great empire is

formed by the intervention of a nation pre-eminent in arms and civilization among backward and unstable communities.

Moreover, India not only presents a sort of picture in which we may recognize and examine for ourselves many of the features and incidents of early history; it also gives us a connected view of society in different stages, of various forms of tribal organization, of different systems of rule, and conceptions of sovereignty. The country affords a field of remarkable abundance for the collection and verification at first hand of living specimens of various types, especially for the study of early ideas on the subject of religion and rulership, and for observing the general movement of Asiatic society, which appears to be not unlike ancient European society in a state of arrested development. This field has been frequently and skilfully worked, by Sir Henry Maine and others, for the purpose of scientific research; and its exploration is of special value to those who, like the English in India, are going through a course of practical lessons in the great and prodigiously difficult art of dealing with races of backward and alien civilizations.

The first chapter in this volume, upon the religion of an Indian province, gives the conclusions formed by me upon the nature and condition of Hinduism in certain inland districts of India not very well known nor much visited, which, although they are administered by British officers, are not part of British India, and have preserved their local characteristics. Chapter VII., on the formation of castes and clans, was written after I had become acquainted with Rajputana, a country parcelled out among native States, and possessing a very rare and antique stratification of society, having still on its surface things that have been long overlaid or swept away in other parts of India.

Chapter VIII. gives a description of this country, and enters into some detail of its political history and social composition. Of the other chapters, that upon the origin of divine myths in India is, in effect, a somewhat venturesome attempt to resuscitate the discredited notions of Euemerus on the subject, and to suggest that some of the latest theories regarding the sources of ancient mythology have been extended too far. The writer, however, has no pretensions to scholarship, and can only claim to have analysed and registered the visible growth of myths in India as a phenomenon which cannot but throw much light upon the derivation of the heroic and divine legends of classic antiquity, in Europe as well as in Asia. In this chapter, and in others, some account is also given of the manner in which the myth-making faculty expands into the processes which evolve polytheism by the gradual elevation of heroes, saints, and remarkable personages to the higher honours of divinity. The rapidity with which their real history became transformed and their earthly origin is lost in the clouds, and the extent to which the evolution of deities is still going on after this fashion through a large portion of Asia, is perhaps not usually known or appreciated, even by students of primitive religions. It appears to be actively at work in China, under a curious and probably unique system of State encouragement and control, whereby the deifying processes are subordinated to administrative authority. Some illustrations of this system, and of the extent to which it prevails, are given in the sixth chapter; but the exact nature of the relations between the government and the religions of China can only be determined by those who know the country and have mixed with the people.

Chapter V. reproduces an Essay in which I ventured upon some dissent from certain views put forth by Professor Max

Müller, in a lecture delivered in Westminster Abbey, regarding the vitality of Brahminism, and its classification as a NonMissionary religion. Professor Max Müller did me the honour of answering my remarks in an article which has since been republished in "Chips from a German Workshop;" and I have now altered or toned down those parts of my original essay which may have been written upon a misunderstanding of the Lecturer's position, or which at any rate I am not prepared to maintain against so distinguished an authority. All that I desire, with deference, to uphold is that Brahminism is a religion by no means dead or even moribund, but that, on the contrary, numbers are constantly brought within its pale, and are allowed to share more or less in its ritual. The last four chapters consist mainly of political discussions and speculations; they also contain references to controversies that were going on at the time when they appeared as articles, so that it is necessary to mention that they were all written not less. than ten years ago. "Islam in India" for instance, is a review of a book published in 1871, and of course it does not nearly cover the extensive ground indicated by this heading to the chapter. Such questions as those relating to the present position and prospects of our Mahomedan fellow subjects in India, to their wants and feelings, and to the degree and manner in which they are likely to be affected, as a community, by the rapid advance of European civilization in India, require much more elaborate and comprehensive treatment, and are indeed closely allied to the momentous subject of the Future of Islam, upon which Mr. Wilfrid Blunt has recently published a dissertation of great interest. As to the chapter on our Religious Policy in India, it gives some retrospective account of what may be called, very roughly, the relations between Church and