In 1789 James Augustus Grant wrote that he had resided for several years in Benares as a free merchant under the protection of the East India Company. He evidently specialized on trade with the Gorakhpur district of Oudh. “I have for some time past and by the force of unremitting exertion and a great expense been enabled to establish factories in Gorruckpoor, etc., in the [Nawab's] Dominions for the manufacture of cloths, sugar, opium, etc., and I effected these establishments without any interest or influence except that which became the result of my own industry.” He had incurred considerable initial losses and expenses, chiefly in propitiating various Indian functionaries and landholders and especially the Nawab's land-revenue officers (amils). The amils seem mostly to have farmed the privilege of collecting the land-revenue on short leases and to have been constantly changing, a fact which made all business concerns highly precarious.

1. The Problem. The chain of incident and action in Śūdraka's deservedly popular drama Mṛcchakaṭika commences with a peculiar ritual on a dark night. The hero Cārudatta, an impoverished but virtuous brahmin caravan merchant, has just finished his evening prayers. At the beginning of the first act, he asks his clownish brahmin friend Maitreya to help in the consummation: kṛto mayā gṛhadevatābhyo baliḥ; gaccha, tvam api catuṣpathe mātṛbhyo balim upahara. “I have completed the bali (food-)offerings to the household gods; go thou, offer (this) bali to the Mothers at the crossroads.” This simple request leads to the rescue of the heroine Vasantasenā from abduction. Here we leave the development of the plot, to investigate the ritual.

Much has been written about British activities in the Far East, particularly in China, in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, especially by American historians. Dr. H. B. Morse's monumental Chronicles of the East India Company trading to China was first in the field and Professor E. H. Pritchard and J. K. Fairbank have been worthy successors. English scholarship on the subject is naturally somewhat older but, possibly for that reason, the work done has not usually been as detailed or thorough: an exception is Michael Greenberg's recent book, British Trade and the Opening of China, 1800–42. To find general surveys of Anglo-Chinese relations by British writers which extend back into the seventeenth century, it is necessary to turn to the books of A. J. Sargent and J. Bromley Eames. But as far as the seventeenth century is concerned historical research has been scanty. That Greenberg should have regarded a summary of events before the period with which he was immediately concerned as sufficient for his purpose was only natural. Fairbank's introductory chapters are more comprehensive but show greater interest in the attitude of the Chinese to external intruders than in the efforts of the East India Company to intrude. Sargent, as he himself acknowledged, was mainly concerned with the nineteenth century and his attempt to provide a historical background was very superficial. Eames paid considerable attention to early British contacts with China but was prone to errors of fact which make him unreliable.

One of the major difficulties which face the English student when he comes to read Urdu poetry is that he cannot understand its metre. Even worse, he will find no short account of Urdu metre—either in English or in Urdu—which will help him very far. And finally, if he goes to Urdu speakers for assistance he will find that nearly all of them will frankly admit their ignorance of the subject and their inability to help him. Urdu poets of established reputation are, in general, no exception in this respect.

In 1908 and 1911 the late Lieut.-Colonel D. C. Phillott published in the Bibliotheca Indica two Persian works which he described on the title-pages as The Qawānīnu 'ṣ-Ṣayyad [sic, for 'ṣ-Ṣayyād] of Khudā Yār Khān 'Abbāsī and The Faras-nāma of Zabardast Khān. Curiously enough the person named on each title-page is not the author but the author's father. Colonel Phillott was evidently unfamiliar with what may be called the Ibn i Fulān Fulān formula [cf. PL. I, p. 21618] and so he misunderstood Dā'ūd ibn Yār- Muḥammad 'Abbāsī when he called himself Ibn i Yār-Muḥammad faqīr Dā'ūd (p. ix) and Ibn i Yār-Muḥammad 'urf Khudā-yār Khān Dā'ūd 'Abbāsī (p. xxi).