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On the Original Inhabitants of 
Bharatavarsa or India. 
(By GUSTAV OPPERT.) 
INTRODUCTION. 
CHAPTER I. 
General Eemaeks. 
No one who undertakes to study the ancient Mstory of 
India can fail to be impressed by the scantiness of the 
material at bis disposal. In fact sucb an undertaking would 
soon appear to be futile, were he to depend solely on Indian 
accounts and records. Fortunately, however, we possess some 
writings of foreigners who visited India ; and their reports 
of what they actually saw during their stay in this country, 
and of what they were able to gather from trustworthy 
sources, furnish us with materials of a sufficiently reliable 
character. If we except Kashmir and Geylon, regarding the 
latter as belonging to India, no part of India possesses 
anything like a continuous historical record. The prepond- 
erance of caste and the social prejudices it creates are disabili- 
ties such as no Hindu who wishes to relate the history of his 
country can entirely overcome. The natives of India have, as 
a rule, little sympathy with people outside their own class, and 
when it is believed that persons belonging to the highest caste 
can by their piety ensure final beatitude, if they simply 
remember and revere the memory of their three immediate 
predecessors — father, grandfather, and great grandfather — 
we need not wonder at the apathy displayed towards history 
by them and by others who are beneath them in the social 
scale. 
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