PREFACE.
With the exception of a few paragraphs, the whole of this little volume of district sketches has already appeared in print, Chapters I and III in the Calcutta Review and Chapter II in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. It was intended all along that the three articles should ultimately be combined so as to form a single series, whenever the Plates that now illustrate them were ready for publication; but, as each section was separately written and made to some extent complete in itself, the result is that they seem to hang together a little loosely. The want of cohesion, however, is only in the joints of the structure and does not arise from any inherent incongruity of material. The two introductory chapters, being devoted to a general description of the district and to a history of its chief town, are a natural prelude to the third, in which all the special interest of the book is concentrated. This gives a circumstantial account of the extensive local improvements that have been carried out during the last six years, explains and defends the principles upon which the work has been conducted and urges an appeal for their wider recognition.
It was quite unnecessary for me to compile a complete and consecutive history of the district, for that has been already supplied in a highly satisfactory manner by the "Historical and statistical Memoir of Bulandshahr," written by Rájá Lachhman Siṅh and published at the Allahabad Government Press in 1874. The fragmentary character of the present monograph may be more readily condoned, if it is considered as a sequel, in which the record of administration has been continued through another decade, and only such facts have been restated as it was desired to group in a special light.
