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 .