THE Essays in this volume have been written to help those who, like myself, are trying to trace the paths worn by the ruling races of the world through the tangled jungles of past time, and thus to learn the real history of the childhood of humanity during the ages when national life began its troubled journey towards its ultimate and, as yet, unseen goal. They call especial attention to the ehronologieal data supplied by social laws and customs, mythic history and ritual, and prove that these when studied provide guiding marks from which we ean deduce, even in ages which have been hitherto called prehistoric, the order in which the leading epoehs of civilisation succeeded one another.

By Louis Jacolliot

India is the world's cradle; thence it is, that the common mother in sending forth her children even to the utmost West, has in unfading testimony of our origin bequeathed us the legacy of her language, her laws, her morale her literature, and her religion. Traversing Persia, Arabia, Egypt, and even forcing their way to the cold and cloudy North, far from the sunny soil of their birth ; in vain they may forget their point of departure, their skin may remain brown, or become white from contact with snows of the West; of the civilizations founded by them splendid kingdoms may fall, and leave no trace behind but some few ruins of sculptured columns; new peoples may rise from the ashes of the first; new cities flourish on the site of the old; but time and ruin united fail to obliterate the legible stamp of origin. Science now admits, as a truth needing no further demonstration, that all the of antiquity were derived from the far East; and thanks to the labors of Indian philologists, our modern languages have there found their derivation and their loots.