Occasional Essays On Native South Indian Life

The following papers were entrusted to the author for publication by Sir Charles Trevelyan, the present Governor of the Madras Presidency, on his departure from England to make his task has been very simple. He has merely arranged the various documents in chronological order, and left them to speak for themselves. His duty has been to lay before the public a series of original papers and articles, in such a shape as to present a complete history of a great enterprise ; and he has acted on the principle that even inaccuracies of scholarship, when regarded as historical, become interesting and instructive. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. The intelligent reader will, of course, bear in mind that more than a quarter of a century has elapsed since the date of the first of these papers, and that the state of things under the pressure of which they were written is greatly changed.