The History of India, as Told by Its Own Historians/Preliminary Note
| The full text of this book has been converted into Wiki format by Laxman Burdak |
By Sir H. M. Elliot, Edited by John Dowson, 1867, Volume I
[p.v][THESE are not the days when the public care to listen to the minor details of an author's life; but Sir H. M. Elliot's relations and the thinned number of his personal friends-while confidently leaving his posthumous works to speak for themselves-recognise the double duty of placing on record the more prominent events of his career, and of defining under what guarantee his writings are now submitted, so to say, to a new generation of readers. The former will be found in a separate note, but to explain the origin and progressive advance of the present publication, it may be stated that after Sir Henry Elliot's death, at the Cape of Good Hope, his fragmentary papers were brought to this country by his widow. And as the introductory volume of the original work had been issued under the auspices and at the cost of the Government of the North-Western Provinces of India, the MSS.-constituting the materials already prepared for the more comprehensive undertaking in thirteen volumes-were placed at the disposal of those ever liberal promoters of Oriental literature, the Directors of the East India Company, by whom they were submitted to a Committee consisting of the late Prof. H. H. Wilson, Mr. Edward Clive Bayley, of the Bengal Civil Service, and Mr. W. H. Morley, of the Inner Temple, a gentleman who had distinguished himself as an Arabic scholar, and who was reputed to be well versed in other branches of Oriental lore. On the recommendation of this Committee, the Court of Directors readily sanctioned a grant of £500 towards the purposes of the publication, and Mr. Morley was himself entrusted with
[p.vi] the editorship. Mr. Morley's circumstances, at this critical time, are understood to have been subject to important changes, so that, although he entered upon his task with full alacrity and zeal, his devotion soon slackened, and when the MSS. were returned four years afterwards, they were found to be in such an imperfectly advanced state as effectually to discourage any hasty selection of a new editor. For which reserve, indeed, there were other and more obvious reasons in the paucity of scholars available in this country, who could alike appreciate the versatile knowledge of the author, and do justice to the critical examination of his leading Oriental authorities, or other abstruse texts, where references still remained imperfect. As Lady Elliot's adviser in this matter, a once official colleague of her husband's, and alike a free participator in his literary tastes, I trust that I have secured the best interests of the projected undertaking in the nomination of Professor J. Dowson, of the Staff College of Sandhurst, who has so satisfactorily completed the first volume, under the revised distribution of the work, now submitted to the public.-EDWARD THOMAS.]