Mysterious India. By Robert Chauvelot. Translated by Eleanor Stimson Brooks.
(T. Werner Laurie. 16s. net.)— M. Chauvelot's notes of travel in India from Bombay to Landi Kotal and southward to Benares, Golconda and the Coromandel coast are vivid and thoughtful. He touches only on what aeemed to him picturesque or romantic or unusual—the splendour of native courts, the iron law of caste, the repulsive fanaticism of the fakir. He ergaineDihi the British administration and wonders whether Indians could govern themselves half so well. He describes with equal zest the ,eighteenth-eentmy French palace erected for a native prince and the burning ghats at Benares. Ile laments the stagnation of the little French settle- ments. The book is illustrated with many attractive photo- graphs. It is not M.. Chauvelot, we are sure, who at the foot of a portrait has described the Aga Khan as "religious and political head of the Mussulmans of India." The Aga Khan would be the last to claim such a title. He is, of course, the hereditary leader of two small Moslem sects, the Bohras and the Khojas. The Khojas are said to be descended from the so-called Assassins who, under the leadership of the "Old Man of the Mountain," gaxe much trouble to the Crusaders in Palestine and Syria.
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