June, 1845.] Proceedings of the Asiatic Society . lix 



Read the following letter from Major Leech, C. B. Acting Secretary 

 to the Governor General, N. W. P. 



H. Torkens, Esq. V. P. and Secretary, Asiatic Society. 



My dear Sir, — With reference to my letter to your address of the 14th of February 

 last, and to your reply of the 2d of last March, erroneously addressed to Mr. Cust, 

 I have now the pleasure to transmit to you the commencement ( 10 times as much will 

 follow) of the manuscript Sanscrit to accompany the Maps of the Kuruk Ghetr which I 

 dispatched by banghy dawk on the 26th ultimo. 



I am much flattered to find that my undertaking" is highly interesting to the Society, 

 and was also so last cold weather by the great interest the Lieutenant-Governor of Agra 

 did me the honor to express in the same. 



Wherever I have been stationed I have felt that I owed it as a duty to the literary 

 public, as well as to Government, to enquire as much as my leisure moments would per- 

 mit, into the language, religious customs, and ancient history of the people I have been 

 placed among. 



Judging from the interest felt in my undertaking in this neighbourhood where the 

 people are familiarized with the scene, I am led to believe that there is not a Native 

 (Hindoo) Court or seat of learning, or possessors of a copy of the Mahabharut in India, 

 at which and to whom a copy of the maps at least would not be a most valuable and 

 highly prized acquisition, while to your learned correspondents in Europe you flatter me 

 by saying it would not be wholly unacceptable. 



I anticipate its being said by a few, and I hope a very few, that the publication of such 

 documents is a prostitution of the press, an offering to Hindoo Idols. But by far the 

 greater numbers will regard it in its true light, as an illustration of the Ancient Geogra- 

 phy of one of the most classic spots in India, tending to create or increase a taste for 

 printing and lithographing among the Natives. And perchance, by making the district of 

 Uglhul the more frequent resort of men of rank, tend to a prosperity to which it has for 

 so many years before lapsing to the British Government been a stranger. 



I am indebted to my friend Captain Abbott, who succeeded me in charge of the district 

 of Uglhul, for the loan of surveying instruments, and of his valuable map of the district, 

 and to the Rajahs of Pateala and Jheend, and the Surdurnea of Thanesur for their 

 ready permission to survey such part of their territories as came within the Kuruk Ghetr. 



You will perceive in this instance, as in others that have come under the notice of the 

 Society (Journals of Natives employed by me in travelling across the Indus published by 

 them) that I have not, as is too often the fashion, robbed the real though humble labourer 

 of his hire, but have made the Pundit of the small Ambalah School, Jwaharlal, enter his 

 name as the compiler of the present manuscript. I have made him again enter the name 

 of Dander, from whose Mahatma he has condensed most of his Urdu. 



Labour I have had none. Expense I have incurred little, perhaps not more than 200 

 rupees. I was alone fortunate in the undertaking suggesting itself to me. 



I have in preparation a Persian map and a Persian Mahatma, comprising the local 

 legends, undertaken at the request of most of the chiefs with whom I am acquainted in 

 these parts. 



I cannot here refrain from calling attention to a little mistake or two made by the im- 

 maculate authority as to the history and country of the Seikhs, who writes in the Calcutta 



