present volume is laid out. It is on account of this feature of the volume that it is given the title of the Mano-rajya of Sarasvati or the Dream-land of the Minerva of our Indian Atheneum. And the writer's justification for this part of his performance is not that his dreams are prophetic, but that he may, by allowing the reader to have a clairvoyant view of them, help his countrymen in groping their way out of darkness into some kind of light. It will be some gain if by that procedure he can show and signal “a line clear” for those that may be wishing to know their place in the programme for hastening the hour of peace.
This object the writer has attempted to attain partly by speaking in the language of myths, legends, and traditions familiar to his countrymen. There is, in his opinion, a deep and almost scientific evolutional allegory consistently running throughout the plot of the great and prolific Mahabharata, and he has devoted a long and, perhaps, tedious chapter in this work to the exposition of this feature of that venerable epic. He is aware that in doing so he has obviously sacrificed well known canons of modern art; but considering the use made of this allegory in the latter part of the volume, the critic will probably be disposed to agree with his views as to the necessity of that course and the appositeness of this otherwise irrelevant-looking matter.
This groundwork of that epic has so much in common with some of the leading ideas worked out by modern social and political speculations, that it has been found possible to translate the latter into the terms of the former supplemented by other similar materials drawn from our ancient literature and modern popular beliefs, even where the beliefs are, to all appearances, superstitious. It is expected that such a use of these materials will enable the ordinary Indian mind to grasp and appreciate Western ideas and ideals to some extent and to some useful purpose.
