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vi complete picture of the development of the country whose teeming millions are now under the sceptre of Great Britain. In carrying out this design, the publishers and the editor have had the generous assistance of the scholars whose work is represented by these volumes. Special care has been taken to make such changes as were needed to meet the requirements of the series in a sympathetic manner and in such a way as to preserve all the essentials, thus giving the reader the results of the ripest scholarship in each field.

Ancient India and its civilization is discussed by the Honourable Romesh Chunder Dutt, of Baroda State, in a manner that will awaken interest in the life and history of our earliest kinsmen of Aryan blood. The second volume, written by Mr. Vincent Smith, recounts the history of the land of the Ganges from the time of Buddha to the first centuries after the Mohammedan conquest of Hindustan, when the history of Mediæval India begins. A comprehensive picture of the fortunes of the country under the rule of Islam is given in the volumes by Mr. Stanley Lane-Poole, and this is supplemented by a collection of the most characteristic descriptions of the period by Mohammedan writers themselves, as translated from their Arabic and Persian originals by Sir Henry M. Elliot, thus covering the history of India down to the time when the land was brought into direct contact with Europe. The settlements by the Portuguese, Dutch, French, and English, and the struggle for supremacy which resulted in