Page:History of India Vol 5.djvu/14

 vi INTRODUCTION a source it is invaluable, and no modern historian of India can afford to neglect it. It is, however, a mine to be worked, not a consecutive history, and its wide leaps in chronology, its repetitions, recurrences, and omissions, render it no easy guide for general readers." On this latter point I desire to lay emphasis and also to add that in order to bring so extensive a mass of material within the compass of a single volume I have been obliged to exercise the utmost circumspec- tion and to confine the selections simply to those which would represent the main outlines of the most impor- tant reigns, spread over nearly a thousand years, keep- ing in view at the same time the aim of supplementing the two preceding books in the series without undue crossing or unnecessary repetition. In discharging this somewhat difficult task I have received material aid, which I desire to acknowledge, from my friend and pupil, Dr. Louis H. Gray. I hope that those who may use the book will find that fair justice has been done to the merits of the various Mohammedan historians included in it. We owe much to their records as a means of understanding the Moslem conquest of Hin- dustan better than would otherwise be possible, and we also find them helpful in preventing us from being led away too far in other directions, if former prejudice might incline us to be biassed or to see only the side of the conquered. In dealing with the text of the excerpts, consider- able latitude has been used an example which was set by Sir Henry Elliot himself, as well as by Pro-