Table of Contents

Volume 1: Dedication; 1. Annual fairs held upon the banks of sacred streams in India; 2. Hindoo system of religion; 3. Legend of the Nerbudda River; 4. A suttee on the Nerbudda; 5. Marriages of trees. The tank and the plaintain. Meteors. Rainbows; 6. Hindoo marriages; 7. The purveyance system; 8. Religious sects. Self-government of the castes. Chimney-sweepers. Washerwomen. Elephant-drivers; 9. The great Iconoclast. Troop routed by hornets. The Ranee of Gurba. Hornets' nest in India; 10. The peasantry and the land settlement; 11. Witchcraft; 12. The silver tree, or kulpa briksha. The Singhara, or trapa bispinosa, and the Guinea worm; 13. Thugs and poisoners; 14. Basaltic cappings of the sandstone hills of central India. Suspension bridge. Prospect of the Nerbudda valley. Deification of a mortal; 15. Legend of the Sauger Lake. Paralysis from eating the grain of the Lathyrus sativus; 16. Suttee tombs. Insalubrity of deserted fortresses; 17. Basaltic cappings. Interview with a native chief. A singular character; 18. Birds' nests. Sports of boyhood; 19. Feeding pilgrims. Marriage of a stone with a shrub; 20. The men-tigers; 21. Burning of Deoree by a freebooter. A Suttee; 22. Interview with the Rajah who marries the stone to the shrub. Orders of the Moon and the Fish; 23. The Rajah of Orcha. Murder of his many ministers; 24. Corn dealers. Scarcities. Famines in India; 25. Epidemic diseases. Scape-goat; 26. Artificial lakes in Bundelcund. Hindoo, Greek, and Roman faith; 27. Blights; 28. Pestle and mortar sugar-mills. Washing away of the soil; 29. Interview with the chiefs of Jansee. Disputed succession; 30. Haunted villages; 31. Interview with the Rajah of Duteea. Fiscal errors of statesmen. Thieves and robbers by profession; 32. Sporting at Duteea. Fidelity of followers to their chiefs in India. Law of primogeniture wanting among Mahomedans; 33. Bhoomeeawut; 34. The suicide. Relations between parents and children in India; 35. Gwalior plain once the bed of a lake. Tameness of peacocks; 36. Gwalior and its government; 37. Contest for empire between the sons of Shah Jehan; 38. Ourungzebe and Moorad defeat their father's army near Ojeun; 39. Dara marches in person against his brothers, and is defeated; 40. Dara retreats towards Lamore. Is robbed by the Jats. Their character; 41. Shah Jehan imprisoned by his two sons, Ourungzebe and Moorad; 42. Ourungzebe throws off the mask, imprisons his brother Moorad, and assumes the government of the empire; 43. Ourungzebe meets Shoojah in Bengal and defeats him, after pursuing Dara to the Hyphasis; 44. Ourungzebe imprisons his eldest son. Shoojah and all his family are destroyed; 45. Second defeat and death of Dara, and imprisonment of his two sons; 46. Death and character of Ameer Jumla; 47. Reflections on the preceding history; 48. The great diamond of Kohinoor. Volume 2: 1. Pindaree system. Character of the Mahratta administration. Causes of their dislike to the paramount power; 2. Dholepore, capital of the Jat chiefs of Gohud. Consequence of obstacles to the prosecution of robbers; 3. Influence of electricity on vegetation. Agra and its buildings; 4. Noor Jehan, the aunt of the Empress Noor Bahul, over whose remains the Taj is built; 5. Father Gregory's notion of the impediments to conversion in India. Inability of Europeans to speak Eastern languages; 6. Futtehpore Secree. The Emperor Akbar's pilgrimage. Birth of Jehangeer; 7. Bhurtpore. Deeg. Want of employment for the military and the educated classes under the Company's rule; 8. Goverdhun, the scene of Krishna's dalliance with the milkmaids; 9. Veracity; 10. Declining fertility of the soil. Popular notion of the cause; 11. Concentration of capital, and its effects; 12. Transit duties in India. Mode of collecting them; 13. Peasantry of India attached to no existing government. Want of trees in Upper India. Cause and consequence. W

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A wide-ranging two-volume portrait of India written by a British colonial official who lived there for more than thirty years.