A History of the Mahrattas. By James Cuninghame Grant Duff.
With an introduction by S. M. Edwardes. 2 vols. Milford. 36s. net.)—This compact and well-annotated new tion of Grant Duff's classic history of the Mahrattas is very deem°. It is uniform with the new editions of Meadows
Taylor's autobiography and Tod's Rajasthan, which Mr. Milford published recently, and it testifies, we trust, to the steady growth of interest in Indian history. Grant Duff served in the East India Company's forces in the Mahratta War of 1817-18, and then acted as Resident at Satara from 1818 to 1822. Ho had special opportunities for collecting materials for his book, which he completed after leaving India and which he published in 1826. His account of Sivaji, the famous leader of the seven- teenth-century Mahratta revolt against the Moguls, is, as the editor points out, fully confirmed by later research. For tho eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the narrative is par- ticularly full and interesting. Mr. Edwardes has prefixed a memoir of the author, and essays on the origin of the Maturates —who are descended from the primaeval tribes of the Deccan— and on Mahratta literature. The Mahrattas were a formidable power when the East India Company was establishing itself in Bengal, and they helped to disintegrate the Mogul Empire at the very moment when it might have made things difficult for the Company.
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