8

PREFACE.

for the Propagation of the Gospel; Mr. Osborn Allen, Secretaryto the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge ; and Dr.George Smith, Secretary for Foreign Missions to the FreeChurch of Scotland .

The book has been thoroughly revised for this (the third)edition. New and valuable matter has been incorporated inevery chapter, and important sections have been added. Thepopulation chapters have been reconstructed on the basis ofthe last Indian Census of 1891; and the whole of the statistics,administrative, economic, commercial, and social, have beenbrought down to the same date. I should add that it is dueto the kind and most generous personal help of Mr. Baines,the Indian Census Commissioner, that I am enabled to bringout this volume in anticipation of his official report of theIndian Census of 1891.

W. W. Hunter.

Oaken Holt, near Oxford,December 1892.