27. PARSI FASHION 124 28. DYER GIRL IN AHMEDABAD 129 29. MUSSULMAN WEAVER 131 30. CAMBAY TYPE 133 31. THE MILKMAID 135 32. A FISHWIFE OF BOMBAY 138 33. TODA WOMAN IN THE NILGIRIES 140 34. GOND WOMAN 142 35. BHIL GIRL 145 36. DANCER IN MIRZAPUR 154 37. MUSSULMAN NAUTCH-GIRL 160 38. DANCER FROM TANJORE 165 39. NAIKIN IN KANARA 172 40. GIPSY WOMAN 177 41. A GURKHA’S WIFE 181 42. A GLIMPSE AT A DOOR IN GUJARÁT 183 43. A WIDOW IN THE DECCAN 186 44. A WOMAN OF THE UNITED PROVINCES 188 45. IN THE HAPPY VALLEY OF KASHMIR 208 46. A DENIZEN OF THE WESTERN GHAUTS 213 47. A WORKING WOMAN AT AJMERE 216 48. BORN BESIDE THE SACRED RIVERS 220 As they are “Oh hail! O bright great God, in the form of that brown-eyed beautiful thing before me, that fills me with astonishment and laughter and supreme delight.” _A Draught of the Blue._ PROFESSOR BAIN. Chapter I AS THEY ARE Others had written even before Vatsyana the Wise wrote his “Gospel of Love.” At that time the power of the Yávans and the Sákas was outstretched over the land. They were peoples that had come out of Persia and Bactria and obscure Scythia, many of them men with the blood of those Ionian soldiers who had marched with Alexander and settled with Eastern wives under Eastern skies. The teachings of Gautama, the Indian prince, they had made their own; and to the countries in which they ruled they had brought the peace of Buddha and the temperate fruitions of Greece. On all the great trade-routes were monasteries of Buddhist monks and large caravanserais for merchants and pilgrims. Even as far as the sands of Lopnor, far across the roof of the world, and to the Gobi desert, where the Chinese land begins, the tribes that gave rulers to India had set their posts and planted their colonies. On cunningly-sealed wedges of wood they sent their royal orders to the wardens of their frontiers and on palm-leaves from the Indian coasts they inscribed the lore that gave the illumination of God to settlements on the mountains and in the Central Asian deserts. In the shrines or stupas that they raised to Buddha, the wise teacher, they had dadoes and frescoes painted in tempera by some Titianus or Heliodorus from the Hellenized Levant, adventurers of a fine Grecian courage, who scattered their harmonious energies and their joy in life over the Indian world. Along the trade-routes marched merchants’