Page:History of India Vol 2.djvu/27

Rh transmitted from the sixth or perhaps the seventh century

Even contemporary evidence, when it is available for later periods, cannot be accepted without criticism. The flattery of courtiers, the vanity of kings, and many other clouds which obscure the absolute truth, must be recognized and allowed for. Nor is it possible for the writer of a history, however great may be his respect for the objective fact, to eliminate altogether his own personality. Every kind of evidence, even the most direct, must reach the reader, when in narrative form, as a reflection from the mirror of the writer's mind, with the liability to unconscious distortion. In the following pages the author has endeavoured to exclude the subjective element so far as possible, and to make no statement of fact without authority.

But no obligation to follow authority in the other sense of the word has been recognized, and the narrative often assumes a form which appears to be justified by the evidence, although opposed to the views stated in well-known books by authors of repute. Indian history has been too much the sport of credulity and hypothesis, inadequately checked by critical judgment of evidence or verification of fact, and "the opinion of the foreman," to use Goethe's phrase, cannot be implicitly followed.

Although this work purports to relate the early history of India, the title must be understood with certain limitations. India, encircled as she is by seas and mountains, is indisputably a geographical unit, and, as