The History of the British Empire in India

RODI

LONDON:

PRINTED BY C. ROWORTH, BELL YARD,

TEMPLE BAR.

ADVERTISEMENT.

WHEN the subject of the following volumes was first proposed to me, and I undertook to discuss it, it was my intention to produce nothing more than a connected narrative of the rise and progress of the British empire in Asia. This I believed to be a task of no great difficulty; at least I was willing to persuade myself that with my previous reading it might be accomplished with comparative ease to myself, and not without benefit to others; but I soon found that any attempt to separate the earlier from the later portions of Indian history would involve my details in a degree of obscurity, such as neither digressions nor explanations would suffice effectually to remove. I was, accordingly, induced to extend my plan, so as to embrace the annals of India from the

earliest times—a measure which, though it has added ten-fold to the obstacles which I have been myself called upon to encounter, will not, I trust, be found to detract from the value of my work in the eyes of the general reader.

CONTENTS

OF

VOL. I.

CHAPTER I.

Early Civilization of the Hindoos-Their arrival in India--

Treatment of the Aborigines-Their forms of Government

and Civil Institutions

..page 1

CHAPTER II.

Early Intercourse of the Hindoos with the Western Nations

Conquests of the Scythians, the Persians, and the

Greeks-Commerce of the Hindoos-Rise of the Turks