The Chronology of Modern India: for Four Hundred Years from the Close of the Fifteenth Century A.D. 1494-1894

About eight years ago materials for the volume were collected from the historical works of Orme, Briggs's Ferishta, Elliot and Dowson, Mill and Wilson, Grant-Duff, Elphinstone, Marshman, Malleson, Kaye, Holmes, Danvers, Phayre, Trotter, and others—too numerous to mention. These were arranged in 1907, but laid aside. In now revising it for the press, much of it has been rewritten and considerably extended. By writers of the eighteenth and most part of last century, Indian personal and place names were written in every variety of spelling—often in forms now scarcely recognisable. To avoid the confusion of such irregularities, proper names are here represented in general accordance with the system in use in the recent Gazetteers and Maps of the Indian Government and in several recent historical works. Differences in the dates of events are not infrequent, occurring chiefly in translations of Muhammadan histories,—arising partly perhaps from inattention in computing the European from the Hijra reckoning—but also from other sources,—and it is difficult to rectify such differences when they amount to a year or more. When careful research is applied to such matters, cases of the kind will in course of time be cleared up; and though none of them are of great importance, they may be corrected when a second edition of this handbook is required.