Rise and Growth: of Bombay Municipal Government

It is always an interesting study to trace the growth of municipal institutions, especially those of great towns and cities. In this respect the modern spirit of historical research, based on authentic state records, contemporary chronicles and other muniments, has contributed not a little towards achieving that purpose. Neither can we forget the invaluable aid which numismatics and archaeology have rendered and are still rendering towards the same end. They have all thrown back the shroud of years, so to say, and revealed to our gaze the sayings and doings of mighty men and mighty states long passed away and almost forgotten. Our modern philologists and archaeologists have made instinct with life, never dreamt of in the philosophy of the past centuries, the rock-cut temples and inscriptions, the monoliths of stone with the edicts of emperors engraved thereon, copperplate grants of kings and chiefs, mounds after mounds of baked bricks recording laws, history and economics, rolls upon rolls of papyrus, taking us back to primeval times, even unrecorded by the scripture, and cylinders on cylinders buried hundreds of feet below the earth which, unearthed, have revived for us the social, political and commercial life of nations, as intelligent and full of human interest as the world of today, who flourished some eight thousand years ago.