1922 SHORT NOTICES 313 of 1,700 by what I had done ' ; but the work remains to-day the classical account of these people, and indispensable in every library that is so bold as to handle Indian topics. It is hard to believe that for nearly a century no fresh English edition has appeared. Three published by The Times of India in Bombay in 1863, 1873, and 1878 are all now hard to procure ; the fourth, published by Cambray & Co., Calcutta, 1912, is ' very poor ' and ' full of misprints '. Mr. S. M. Edwardes, true to civil service traditions, has been at great pains to prepare a new edition in two volumes, and Mr. Milford has done students of Indian history a great service in publishing it. For the Marathas are perhaps the only Hindu people who within historic times could offer even the germ of a national policy. What elements of patriotism there were among them rested largely on the foundation of the Hindu religions and owed their consolida- tion to the pressure of a foreign rule and creed : just as they seem to do to-day. But success aroused too many disruptive rivalries to be prolonged, and India is probably far yet from producing real national unity. Mr. Edwardes's introduction includes a short memoir of Grant Duff and his authorship ; a most scholarly sketch of Maratha literature, in which he discusses particularly the religious and reforming basis of the Bhakti school of poets and the narrow range of their influence ; and an extremely valuable examination of the origin of the Marathas. To Sir Herbert Bisley's theory that the Marathas were of Scytho-Dravidian origin, he prefers Mr. Enthoven's view that their stock was pre-Aryan, reinforcing this by showing the aboriginal character of their chief gods, Khandoba and Bhavani, and their extreme attachment to the ancient land tenures, such men as Sindia and the Bhonsla preferring their title of pdtal to any other and striving by all means to retain the tiny village- estates of their families. Mr. Edwardes concludes that the Marathas are derived from the primeval tribes of the Deccan and their southern lands, and that their claims to Rajput descent are unfounded. The book has an excellent index and a map of southern, western, and part of central India which lacks all indication of contours, often vital to the story, but is otherwise admirably clear. M. E. M. J. The government of India have published, in a volume of about eighty pages, an account of the proceedings at the second meeting of the Indian Records Commission, held at Lahore in January 1920. Representatives of two Indian states (Indore and Baroda) took part in the deliberations. Several matters of importance were discussed, and among the decisions reached was one to issue calendars of the correspondence between the court of directors and the Indian administrations, beginning with the year 1757. It was also determined to print in full the Madras general letters for the period 1702-39. The volume contains the texts of some interesting papers read or presented by members of the commission, as well as the rules regulating the access of the public to the records of the government of India. W. F. In walks along the line of the Roman Wall there is one book, small enough to be slipped into the pocket, which every traveller should take
