(8th September 1907) made it obligatory for periodicals amenable to the ecclesiastical authority to be submitted to a censor, who subsequently makes useful observations. The legislation of Leo XIII. resulted in the better observance of the rules for the publication of books, but apparently did not modify the practice as regards the reading of prohibited books. It is to be regretted that the catalogue does not discriminate among the prohibited works according to the motive of their condemnation and the danger ascribed to reading them. The tendency of the practice among Catholics at large is to reduce these condemnations to the proportions of the moral law. See H. Reusch, _Der Index der verbotenen Bücher_ (Bonn, 1883); A. Arndt, _De Libris prohibitis commentarii_ (Ratisbon, 1895); A. Boudinhon, _La Nouvelle Législation de l'index_ (Paris, 1899); J. Hilgers, _Der Index der verbotenen Bücher_ (Freiburg in B., 1904); A. Vermeersch, _De prohibitione et censura librorum_ (Tournai, 1907); T. Hurley, _Commentary on the Present Index Legislation_ (Dublin, 1908). (A. Bo.*) FOOTNOTE: [1] Hardouin, _Conc._ ii. 940; Labbé, _Conc._ ii. 938-941. The whole document has also been reprinted in Smith's _Dict. of Chr. Antiq._, art. "Prohibited Books." INDIA,[1] a great country and empire of Asia under British rule, inhabited by a congeries of different races, speaking upwards of fifty different languages. The whole Indian empire, including Burma, has an area of 1,766,000 sq. m., and a population of 294 million inhabitants, being about equal to the area and population of the whole of Europe without Russia. The population more than doubles Gibbon's estimate of 120 millions for all the races and nations which obeyed imperial Rome. The natives of India can scarcely be said to have a word of their own by which to express their common country. In Sanskrit, it would be called "Bharata-varsha," from Bharata, a legendary monarch of the Lunar line; but Sanskrit is no more the vernacular of India than Latin is of Europe. The name "Hindustan," which was at one time adopted by European geographers, is of Persian origin, meaning "the land of the Hindus," as Afghanistan means "the land of the Afghans." According to native usage, however, "Hindustan" is limited either to that portion of the peninsula lying north of the Vindhya mountains, or yet more strictly to the upper basin of the Ganges where Hindi is the spoken language. The "East Indies," as opposed to the "West Indies," is an old-fashioned and inaccurate phrase, dating from the dawn of maritime discovery, and still lingering in certain parliamentary papers. "India," the abstract form of a word derived through the Greeks from the Persicized form of the Sanskrit _sindhu_, a "river," pre-eminently the Indus, has become familiar since the British acquired the country, and is now officially recognized in the imperial title of the sovereign. THE COUNTRY Position and shape.