This work is the final volume of a series descriptive of India in its varied aspects–administrative, industrial, ethnological, and social. Dealing exclusively with the Indian states, it constitutes a survey, unique in its exhaustive character of that part of the vast Eastern Dominion which is not directly under British rule. The Indian princes, their genealogies and their racial affinities and personal traits are here treated with the authoritative force derived from information specially supplied, and at the same time a complete picture is given of their states, the facts and statistics in every case being brought up to the latest possible date. As a whole the volume is a marvellously graphic representation of the many-sided life of those parts of India which are nearest in outward appearance to a past in which European influences were unknown. It has been said that the Indian aristocracy is the oldest in the world, and the truth of that assertion will be found in the family histories of many of the princes, not a few of whose ancestors had a venerable lineage when the Norman William descended upon the shores of England. Ancient, too, in a large number of instances are their possessions as centres of Eastern civilization, and a glance at the pages of the volume only is needed to see what a wealth of historic monuments they hold within their limits. For pure romance there is nothing in the east to compare with the capitals of several of the Rajpoot states, and there is hardly one of the states of importance described in the work which does not possess some feature of exceptional archaeological interest.
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