1 PREFACE, a
2 the people in tit country at various times. The origin of the
3 people has beA traced, so far as was consistent with the objects of
4 this work art the religious notions of the people, and their remark-
5 able custouS and usages have been described. I have, in short,
6 attempter to trace the Panjabi, from the time when he lived a
7 primiti~ life, to that in which he claims the highest privileges that
8 could oe legitimately conferred upon him ; from an age of barbar-
9 ism v0 an age of enlightenment, when he shares, with the rest of
10 the Crown’s subjects, the benefits and blessings of a civilized
11 Covernment.
12 The magnitude of the scheme must be my plea for the brief
13 manner in which I have treated of general subjects, for, had I
14 ventured to deal with them fully, the work would have swelled
15 to an enormous extent, and it was not intended to make it an
16 encyclopedia. I have, in short, endeavoured so to treat of each
17 subject as to bring the work within the compass and scope of a
18 provincial history.
19 That a competent English scholar would have done more justice
20 to the work, I freely admit. Iam neither unconscious of my own
21 shortcomings, and of the many defects in the work which I have
22 ventured to lay before the public, nor, in spite of the care bestow-
23 ed on the work, am lin a position to claim for it the credit of
24 being a complete history of the Panjdb. It is possible that some
25 mistakes have crept in, for which I ask the indulgence of the learned
26 reader. It is possible, too, that more discerning eyes will find im-
27 perfections in my work that are invisible to mine; but, in the
28 words of Mill, “I shall yet appeal from the sentence of him who
29 shall judge of me solely by what I have not done. An equitable
30 and truly useful decision would be grounded upon an accurate es-
31 timation of what I have done, and what I have not done, taken
32 together.” If that eminent historian of India, with all his great
33 literary talents, thought the plea applied to his case, it will, @ for-
34 tiort, have application to the case of one like myself, who has no
35 pretensions whatever to systematic scholarship. And if I am ask-
36 ing the learned reader to approve of my labours in a field of some
37 difficulty, I do so, not because I am sanguine of their worth, but
38 because I have so much confidence in his indulgence. My reason
39 for attempting the work is simply this: Since no one of higher
40 qualifications had thought of such a work, I conceived that I might
41 make an attempt, however imperfect, to supply what I considered
42 a want, with no ostentatious object, but with a view solely to
43 awakening interest, and inducing more competent persons to com-
44 plete what I might have left incomplete, and to accomplish what I
45 was not in a position fully to execute.
46 And now, my dear countrymen, before I close this review, let
47 me say a few words to you, words which I feel you will do well to
48 take to heart. When you have read my history, will you put it
49 Sri Satguru J agjit Singh J i eLibrary NamdhariElibrary@ gmail.com