SIRE, YOUR MAJESTY’S Devoted subject and servant, JAMES TOD. PREFACE No one can undertake with a light heart the preparation of a new edition of Colonel Tod’s great work, _The Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan_. But the leading part which the Rājputs have taken in the Great War, the summoning of one of their princes to a seat at the Imperial Conference, the certainty that as the result of the present cataclysm they will be entitled to a larger share in the administration of India, have contributed to the desire that this classical account of their history and sociology should be presented in a shape adapted to the use of the modern scholar and student of Indian history and antiquities. In the Introduction which follows I have endeavoured to estimate the merits and defects of Colonel Tod’s work. Here it is necessary only to state that though the book has been several times reprinted in India and once in this country, the obvious difficulties of such an undertaking have hitherto prevented any writer better qualified than myself from attempting to prepare an annotated edition. Irrespectively of the fact that this work was published a century ago, when the study of the history, antiquities, sociology, and geography of India had only recently started, the Author’s method led him to formulate theories on a wide range of subjects not directly connected with the Rājputs. In the light of our present knowledge some of these speculations have become obsolete, and it might have been possible, without impairing the value of the work as a Chronicle of the Rājputs, to have discarded from the text and notes much which no longer possesses value. But the work is a classic, and it deserves to be treated as such, and it was decided that any mutilation of the original text and notes would be inconsistent with the object of this series of reprints of classical works on Indian subjects. The only alternative course was to correct in notes, clearly distinguished from those of the Author, such facts and theories as are no longer accepted by scholars.