IT is with mingled feelings of pleasure and unfeigned diffidence that I now place this completed work before the public. The great task of compiling for the first time a connected and cleat history of the Ancient Hindus requires greater leisure and more extensive reading than I can lay claim to. Years of study, often interrupted, enabled me however’ to grasp the leading facts, and during the last three years I have worked continuously in moments spared from official duties to arrange these facts in their present shape.