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ORIENTAL MEMOIRS:

A NARRATIVE OF

SEVENTEEN YEARS RESIDENCE IN INDIA.

BY JAMES FORBES, Esa. F.R.S.,

SECOND EDITION,

REVISED BY HIS DAUGHTER,

THE COUNTESS DE MONTALEMBERT.

IN TWO VOLUMES.

VOL. I.

LONDON:

RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET,
Publisher in Ordinary to His Majesty.

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INTRODUCTION.

THE Correspondence from which these Memoirs are compiled, may perhaps strike the reader as being of a date not very recent: however, we must recollect that the Indian does not change: that his manners, customs, institutions, and religion are the same as in the time of Alexander, is proved from the following passage taken from this work :

"Megasthenes, who was sent ambassador by Seleucus to Sadracottos, King of Practi, whose dominion now forms the fertile provinces of Bengal, Baher, and Oude, wrote an account of his embassy, which Arrian has preserved in his History of India; and that narrative, written two thousand years ago, when compared with the modern history of the Hindoos, convinces us how little change they had undergone during that long period; nor have the conquests and cruelties of their Mahomedan invaders, nor their commercial intercourse with the Europeans settled among them, been able to alter the long established manners and customs so deeply interwoven in their religious tenets."

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It will be observed, that one of the principal objects of the author throughout these Memoirs, is to explain and reconcile from the existing manners and customs of the East, many passages of Scripture which may appear obscure or unintelligible to the European who has never visited those countries, and of which the modern sophist avails himself as an excuse for rejecting the authenticity of the sublime and consolatory truths contained in the Sacred Volumes.

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