[1] “No other work in India at the present day possesses the attraction which these epics have for the majority of the people.”--_Life in an Indian Village_, by T. Rama Krishna, B.A. (T. Fisher Unwin, 1891). [2] Professor Max Müller’s Hibbert Lectures, 1878, p. 50. [3] Prisoners of war of all ranks were sacrificed in numbers. [4] Du Chaillu’s “The Viking Age,” vol i., chapter xx., _et seq._ [5] “A Brief History of the Indian People,” by Sir William Wilson Hunter, K.C.S.I. (Trübner and Co.). [6] The world has recently been informed by Dr. Brinton that the theory attributed to Dr. Latham was really first advanced by Omalius D’Halloy in the “Bulletins de l’Academie Royale de Belgique” in May, 1848 (“Nature,” July 21st, 1892). [7] As is maintained by Dr. Hermann Braunehoffer, “Journal of Royal Asiatic Society,” 1890, pp. 687-689. [8] “The Origin of the Aryans,” by Isaac Taylor, M.A., LL.D. (Walter Scott); “Prehistoric Antiquities of the Aryan Peoples,” by Dr. O. Schrader, translated by F. B. Jevons, M.A. (Charles Griffin and Co.). [9] The preparations for a recital of this kind in a village in the Madras Presidency are thus described. “People came pouring in from Kelambakam and from neighbouring villages to the house of the village headman. On the _pial_ of his house was seated the preacher. Before him was placed the picture of Krishna playing the flute and leaning on a cow. The picture was profusely decorated with flowers. There were also two small vessels. In one there were camphor and some burning incense, in the other were flowers and fruits. The people swarmed about like bees.”--_Life in an Indian Village_, by T. Rama Krishna, B.A., p. 144. [10] “The Ethnography of Afghanistan,” by Dr. H. W. Bellew, C.S.I., in the “Asiatic Quarterly Review,” October, 1891. [11] “The Rámáyan of Válmikí,” translated into English verse by Ralph T. H. Griffith, M.A., Principal of the Benares College (London, Trübner and Co.). [12] Of Yoga and Yogaism I have given a brief account in a previous work, “Indian Life, Religious and Social,” pp. 11-47 (London, Fisher Unwin). [13] “The Ramayana,” translated into English prose from the original Sanskrit of Valmiki by Manmatha Nath Dutt, M.A. (Deva Press, Calcutta). If not otherwise stated, all prose quotations from the “Ramayana” included in the following pages are derived from this work. [14] “The ruins of the ancient capital of Kama and the children of the Sun may still be traced in the present Ajudhya near Fyzabad. Ajudhya is the Jerusalem or Mecca of the Hindus.”--Note, vol. i., p. 35, of Mr. Griffith’s translation of the “Ramayana” (Trübner and Co., London). [15] What a terrible thing it is for a Hindu to be childless can be understood, and then only partially, by bearing in mind that, without a son to perform the complex funeral rights and ceremonies for a deceased father, the dead man’s soul must undergo ages of trouble in the next world.