AUTHOR ' S PREFACE
ancient history of their country is, for one tiling, enshrouded in chimera and fable, and, unfortunately, such incoherence and such obscurity prevail in their written records, which are our only means of really getting at the truth, that it is not too much to presume that we shall never succeed in throwing proper light on all this mass of absurdities. The most popular and best known of these written records are the Bdmayana, the Bhagavata, and the Mahdbhdrata '; but the information which their authors give about the dates, events, and duration of the different dynasties; about the heroes of India and their prowess in war; about the various revolutions which occurred in the country and
the circumstances which led to them; about the beginnings of Hindu polity; about the discoveries and progress in science and art; in a word, about all the most interesting
features of history,— all information of this kind is, as it were, buried amid a mass of fable and superstition.
My readers will see in the following pages to what extremes the people of India carry their belief in and love for the marvellous. Their first historians were in reality poets, who seem to have decided that they could not do better than compose their poems in the spirit of the people for whom they were writing. That is to say, they were
guided solely by the desire to please their readers, and accordingly clothed Truth in such a grotesque garb as to
render it a mere travesty from an historical point of view.
The Indian Muse of History thus became a kind of magician whose wand performed wonders. The successors of these
first poet-historians were actuated by the same motives, and even thought that it added to their own glory to improve on their predecessors and to surpass them in the
absurdity of their fictions.
While waiting for inquirers, more skilful than myself, to find a way through this labyrinth, which to me is absolutely
inextricable, I offer to the public a large number of authentic records which I have carefully collected, and which, for the most part, contain particulars that are either unknown or only partially known, in the hope that they will be found not altogether devoid of interest. I believe,
1
These arc the three great Hindu Epic poems. Vide Part II,
Chapter XXII, and Part III, Chapter V.