1 vl ORIGINAL PREFACE.
2 value which attaches to the information that I have recorded renders that in-
3 formation less worthy ol record. In matters such as are discussed in this
4 report, the next hest thing to having them put rightly is to have them put
5 wrongly, if only the wrongness be an intelligent wrongness ; for "o we stimu-
6 late inquiry and provoke criticism ; and it is only by patient anti ^ -pread
7 inquiry and incessant and minute criticism, that we can hope to arrive on these
8 subjects at accurate information and sound generalisations. Nothing would be
9 so welcome to me as to find the officers of the Province setting to woi'k to
10 correct and supplement the information given in my report ; for the more
11 holes they will pick and the more publicly they will pick them, the faster shall
12 we extend and improve our knowledge of the matters discussed.^
13 I need not apologise for the many and palpable defects of the report, so
14 far as they are due to the haste with which all official publications have to be
15 prepared. Pages which have been written against time in the first instance, which
16 have been sent to press often without even the most cm-sory revision, and which,
17 when once in type, the writer has not felt at liberty to improve save by the most
18 trilling corrections, must not be judged by any literary standard. But T must,
19 in justice to myself, 1)0 allowed to make one explanation which will account for
20 much hiu'ried and slovenly work that is ouly too apparent in the following
21 pages. On the 13th of January 1883, I received ordei-s from the Pan jab
22 Government to the effect that the report must be finislied without fail by the
23 end of the following Fel^ruary. When these orders reached me, I had com-
24 pleted only Chapters I, II, and IV, and the first two Parts of Chapter III ;
25 while Part II of Chapter VI which deals with Pathans and Biloches, and the
26 greater portion of Chapters XI and XII and of the first two Parts of Chapter
27 XIII, were written in the rough, though exceedingly incomplete. Thus I had
28 six weeks allowed me within which to fill in the lacnnit 'n these last sections,
29 to discuss increase and decrease of population, language, caste with the excep-
30 tion of Pathans and Biloches, age, sex, and civil condition, occupations, educa-
31 tion, and infirmities, and to summarise the results of our Census expeiience.
32 The portion of the report which was wholly written within these six weeks
33 compi'ises some 260 pages of print. It is hardly to be wondered that my
34 treatment of these subjects is hasty and imperfect. My own feeling on looking
35 back, is one of surprise that I accomplished the task after any fashion whatever.
36 But on the 2Gth of February the MS. of my repoit was completely ready for
37 press, and has not been touched since then. The press has been kept fully
38 supplied with copy from the end of October 1883 ; and the subsequent delay is
39 wholly due to the difficulty experienced in getting the report printed and
40 published.
41 1 I woiild suggest the pages of Panjah Nntes and Queries, a small periodical juit started
42 nnder the Kditorship of Captain Temple of Ambala, as a convenient niedinm for discussion,