of the most important books of
the land have been written and at the dates of the events narrated in
them. Or they may be helped, to some extent, to learn this history by
a study of the teachings of the books themselves, which may indicate
the time in which they were written. A few inscriptions and coins give
the dates of certain reigns, which thus bring us directly and briefly
into the correct era of certain important events.

But the bulk of the history of India comes through foreigners. At
different periods in the history of the land men of other
nationalities visited India and then recorded their observations
concerning the country and the people. The Greeks were great
travellers and keen observers in ancient times. They came to India and
left in their books such statements about the land as assist us to
understand its condition at that period. Then the Chinese, in the
early centuries of the Christian era, visited this land and recorded
in their works much of interest about the social and religious
condition of the people. Later, the Mohammedan conquest brought many
foreigners into India, and some of the writers of Islam give us
further insight into the affairs of the country. From the fifteenth
century the Romish missionaries have conveyed, through their reports
to Rome, much of information concerning the people and their life. And
thus the history of India has largely depended upon the keen and
careful observations and statements of men of other lands who came
here for travel, trade, or religion. But Indians themselves have, at
no time, contributed to this most important department of literature.
We may search in vain for even one volume of reliable history out of
the myriad tomes of embellished narratives which have emanated from
the fertile brains of the men of India. How shall we account for this
strange and very striking fact? It must be, in part, owing to the
innate passion of India at all times for poetic embellishment and
exaggeration. A cool, scientific, unadorned statement of a fact or of
an event has never satisfied the soul of the children of the tropics.
Hence, the history of the past becomes legend, human heroes are
painted as divine, and epochs and eras are lengthened out to almost
eternal proportions.

Now the most serious result of all this is that the people have come
firmly to believe that these wild exaggerations, which were written by
some dreamy poets of the past, are the sane and cool expr