Page:Ancient India as described by Ptolemy - John Watson McCrindle.djvu/10

PREFACE. vii to kis edition of Marco Polo and in other works from his pen. Frequent reference will be found in my notes to that work of vast erudi- tion, Prof. Lassen's Indisclie Alter tlimmlcunde. Unfortunately the section which he has devoted to a full examination of Ptolemy's India is the least satisfactory portion of his work. His system of identification is based on a wrong principle, and many of the conclusions to which it has led are such as cannot be accepted. His work is notwithstanding, as Yule says, " a precious mine of material for the study of the amcient grography of India." For elucida- tions of the Ptolemaic geography of particular portions of India I have consulted with great advantage such works as the folloAving ,— Wilson's ArianaJntiqtm, General Cunningham's Geography of Ancient India, Vol. I. (all yet published), and his Eeports on the Archcwlogical Survey of India ; Bishop Caldwell's Introduc- tion to his Bravidian Grammar, valuable for identification of places in the south of the Peninsula; the Bombay Gazetteer, edited by . Mr. J. M. Campbell, who has carefully investi- gated the antiquities of that Presidency • the volumes of Asiatic Researches-, the Journals of the Boyal Asiatic Society and of the kindred Societies in India ; the Journals of the Boyal Geographical Society ; the articles on India and places m India in Smith's Dictionary of Cla^si^ cal Geography, ^viiien almost all by Mr