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AUGUST, 1921)
BOOK-NOTICES
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100 years of investigation, ever increasing in accu- racy and method, has shown to be mostly ertone. ous. It had its value, however, in setting genera - tions of patient scholars and searchers after truth on to lines of study, which have produced much knowledge that must be for ever sound. Ana although one knows now that a great deal of what Tod thought and read is wholly inadmissible us the truth, one cannot help being struok by the extent of the learning of his time. The serious writers and thinkers that were his contemporaries were much more often on the right track then is perhaps nowadays acknowledged, and though they could but grope where we can now 800-as we in our turn may be in the eyes of our successors really groping where we think we see-their method was at bottom truly anthropological i.e. they tried to find the springs of action of the Indian people in their history and ethnology as well as in the society they observed about them. When, how. ever, as in the case of Tod, they presented the narrative of their observations, and the speculations based thereon, in an attractive literary form, they produced a danger to succeeding students. Tod evidently know so much at first hand; he road everything bearing on his subject that he could come across, and he wrote it all down with such honesty of purpose and in so entertaining a style that he produced a classic : and classios are apt to be dangerous things, if accepted as gospel and not read with the discre- tion that subsequent study should induce in the rander. For this reason it is high time that such A guide to the truth, as we now understand it, should be produced by one so competent to provide it as Mr. Crooke.
While thus discounting Tod's trustworthiness in many respects, one cannot but be struck by the perspioncity that induced him to advocate the alien" Scythic " origin of many Rajput tribes, though the evidence in his day was so scanty that his advocacy could not be shown to be more than speculative. To take another instance of true historical insight. He is describing the influence of women on Rajput Society, and in a series of historioal and traditional instances of its effect on the history of Hindu India he asks: "What subjected the Hindu to the dominion of the Islamite ?" And Answers "The rape of the prin cess of Kanauj." When composing a rébu mé of Indian History only a few years ago, the present writer, with the fruits of infinitely more research At hand then was available to Tod, made this very event a turning point in Indian History, remarking that "in 1175 Jayachandra (Jai Chand) Gabarwar
of Kanaujheld a swayamvara (the public choice of & husband) for his daughter at Kanauj. and Prithviraj Chauhan (Rai Pithora) of Delhi and Ajmer, his cousin, took the opportunity to carry her off. The feud thus generated between the two great Rajput Rulers of the (then) Hindu frontiers enabled Muhammad Ghori, who had overthrown the Muhammadan dynasty established by Mahmud of Ghazni in the Punjab, to found in 1193 the Sultanate of Delhi and Northern India, which led eventually to the Mughal Empire." One more instance in addition to the above must suffice to make clear the point now raised. In Vol. II p. 693 of the reprint. Tod has a philologica note, in itself wrong, but containing a prescient remark, which induces one to wonder if he had an inkling, in spite of the general belief of his time, that Sanskrit was not an original language, but merely one of a group arising out of some older common tongue. His statement concerning a certain etymology, untraced to its source in his day, is that it " may be from the same primeval language that formed the Sanskrit."
On the whole, the attitnde which it is safe to adopt towards Tod and his work cannot be better expressed than in his Editor's own words. "Even in those points which are most opon to criticism, the Annals possesses importance because it repre. sents a phase in the study of Indian religions ethnology, and sociology. No one can examine it without increasing pleasure and admiration for & writer who, immersed in arduous official work, was able to indulge his taste for research. His was the first real attempt to investigate the beliefs of the peasantry as contrasted with the official Brahmanism, a study which in recent years has revolut onized the current conceptions of Hinduism. Even if his versions of the inscriptiong which he collected fail to satisfy the requirements of more recent scholars, he deserves credit for rescuing from neglect and almost certain destruction epigraphical material for the use of his successors. The same may be said of the drawings of build ings, some of which have fallen into decay or have been mutilated by their careless guardians. When he deals with facts which came under his personal observation, his accounts of beliefs, folklore, social life, customs, and manners possess per. manent value." It remains to say that Mr. Crooke has carried out his plan of editing admirably : that is, he has given the text as it stands, errors and all; only adapting the spelling of place and personal names and of vernacular words to that generally adopted by scholars of the day dealing with India- a great saving of labour in reading
