THE GODS OF INDIA: A BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THEIR HISTORY, CHARACTER & WORSHIP

The author reveals that although many books have been written of recent years on Hinduism as a religious system, the number of works on Hindu mythology is extremely few, and scarcely one of these attempts to treat the subject in a popular way. Of this small number some have been out of print for many years, and others are intended solely for the student, as for instance A. A. Macdonell?s admirable book on Vedic Mythology. One of the latest and best known of these books is W. J . Wilkins? Hindu Mythology, but this book appeared 31 years ago (the second edition in 1900), and excellent as the book is, it is not general in its scope. It confines itself to Vedic and Puranic deities, with special relation to the mythology pertaining to Bengal. The purpose of the present volume is to furnish an account of the deities known to India as a whole, a book which it is hoped, while of some use to the serious student, may yet be regarded of so simple a character as to make it interesting to the general reader. With the marked growth in our knowledge of the affairs of our great Dependency, and the increasing attention paid to all phases of Indian life, it is impossible to disregard the gods and goddesses who are the objects of worship of some 217,000,000 of our Hindu fellowsubjects, and it has been his endeavour to supply in small compass a correct though not exhaustive account of the most important and most representative of the many thousands of gods worshipped by the Hindus. The fact is that the stories of the Hindu deities need neither denunciation nor condemnation from his pen ? they are largely selfcondemned. The book contains 68 illustrations and a map to delineate the subject properly. v