XX Proceedings of the 
lies before the investigator of this generation. In this connec- 
‘ion, we cannot afiord to ignore the fundamental position that 
the history of a nation is not merely a chronicle of its political 
events, but comprehends equally every important development 
in the domain of religious, social and economic life. It is no 
reproach to the Cambridge History that from this standpoint 
it has not realised our highest conception of historical work. 
One of the greatest achievements of the nineteenth century 
was the application of scientific methods to historical studies, 
sequence, an inflexible order, an eternal law of progress. This 
indeed is expressly recognised by the projectors of the Cam- 
bridge History. “It is precisely to the last quarter of the 
eighteenth century,’’ they say, ‘‘that we may trace the 
growth of the modern scientific spirit of investigation, which 
may be defined as a recognition of the fact that no object and 
no idea stands alone by itself as an isolated phenomenon. 
All objects and all ideas form links in a series, and therefore it 
follows that nowhere, whether in the realm of nature or in the 
sphere of human activity, can the present be understood 
without reference to the past.’’ In the evolution of the race, 
there are no sudden starts, no absolute beginnings History 
is thus like a continuous flow of the Ganges, out of the dark 
and mysterious heights of hoary antiquity, which emerging 
flows unceasingly into eternity. The time, however, has not 
yet arrived for undertaking a history of Ancient Indian History 
and Culture from the standpoint of the philosophical student 
of History. Notwithstanding the iabours of generations of 
assiduous scholars in many lands, we are still on the threshold. 
We 
expected discovery. We cannot consequently blame the con- 
tributors to the Cambridge History, many of them famous 
as profound investigators, merely because they have resisted 
the temptation to draw an idealistic picture of ancient India 
and her civilisation. We may feel disappointed that the 
Cambridge History. inspite of its many excellences, does not 
reach the ideal of a History of Ancient India, which will 
portray the picture of each period as evolved out of the sum 
total of circumstances and activities characterising the preced- 
ing age. Such an ideal cannot be realised in a work, which, 
for the very reason that it is an epoch-making Encyclopedia, 
composed by an army of experts, fails to furnish a continuous, 
and uninterrupted flow of historical stream. The synthesis of 
different chapters and different sections, which makes one 
period imperceptibly glide into another, can be accomplished 
by one master mind, like Grote or Mommsen, and not by 4 
so that History may be regarded as teaching a continuous 
— ew as 
