Arriving in this part of the world, I saw several works on India in which their learned authors have attempted to treat of the manners, customs, and religion of the Hindoos. It is no wonder that so inquisitive, learned, and civilized a people as the American should want to know all about Hindostan, the “Golden Orient,” which was the dream of the enterprising Europeans of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. But how far these books give the true account of the thing, a Brahmun can well judge. A story is prevalent in this country, on the authority of missionaries, to the effect that the Hindoo devotees throw themselves under the heavy car of Juggernauth as sacrifices. Again, wherever I go my friends ask me, “Do the Hindoo mothers throw their babies into the Ganges now?”[1] and other questions of similar purport. I am quite amused to see the little schoolboys and girls in America, who seem to know more of India than I do. I never heard such stories even from the lips of my grandmother. I admit, however, other facts,--as the burning the Shotees, and Hook-swinging, etc. It is very difficult for a foreigner to understand the life and religion of the Hindoos, a people who, owing to their caste system, have no social intercourse with the Jobuns (the people who are not Hindoos). A foreigner spending a quarter of a century in a Hindoo village, would understand little of their peculiarities. His attempt to describe the Hindoo life is similar to that of sketching the buildings within the walls of China. But the walls of superstition which guard the Hindoo are impregnable, and stronger than those of China. Hence the imperfect, and for the most part untrue accounts which European and American travellers bring home to their friends. They tell merely according as they see, but not what they know. Seeing the cabinets of my friends here full of imperfect, broken, meaningless curiosities from India, I thought of helping them with something true and substantial; not what I picked up on “India’s coral strand,” but what I lived and moved among from my infancy. And again, being a Brahmun of the highest caste in the community, all the religious and social institutions were open for my inspection, hence my information is genuine. Though I desired very much on my arrival to write a book on Indian life and religion, yet my imperfect knowledge of the English language prevented me. At the kind invitation of my valued friend, Rev. George E. Ellis, D.D., of Charlestown, Mass., I gave two lectures on India, before his people. Hearing what I had to say, and finding it novel and of interest, he desired me to give it to the public in the form of a book, and promised his precious help in the enterprise. Thus the old desire, burning unseen in my heart, grew stronger, and I started in the enterprise at once.