INTRODUCTION.
A FEW words seem necessary regarding the origin of these stories, in addition to what the Narrator says for herself in her Narrative, and what is stated in the Collector's 'Apology.'
With the exception of two or three, which will be recognised as substantially identical with stories of Pilpai or other well-known Hindoo fabulists, I never before heard any of these tales among the Mahrattas, in that part of the Deccan where the Narrator and her family have lived for the last two generations; and it is probable that most of the stories were brought from among the Lingaets of Southern India, the tribe, or rather sect, to which Anna de Souza tells us her family belonged before their conversion to Christianity.
The Lingaets form one of the most strongly marked divisions of the Hindoo races south of the river Kistna. They are generally a well-favoured, well-to-do people, noticeable for their superior frugality, intelligence, and industry, and for the way in which they combine and act together as a separate body apart from other Hindoos. They have many peculiarities of costume, of social ceremony, and of religion, which strike even a casual observer; and though clearly not aboriginal, they seem to have much ground for their claim to belong to a more ancient race, and an earlier wave of immigration, than most of the Hindoo nations with which they are now intermingled.
The country they inhabit is tolerably familiar to most English readers on Indian subjects, for it is the theatre of many of the events described in the great Duke's earlier despatches, and in the writings of Munro, of Wilkes, and Buchanan. The extraordinary beauty of some of the natural features of the coast scenery, and the abundance of the architectural and other remains of powerful and highly civilised Hindoo dynasties, have attracted the attention of
