PREFACE
 

I WAS led to select Bernier's Travels as the opening
volume of my Oriental Miscellany Series for two
reasons. An edition of this book had been promised,
but never actually issued, by my Grandfather as one of
the works to be included in that Miscellany, which
may be regarded as the precursor of all the healthy,
cheap, and popular literature of the present day; and,
further, it was a book which I had ever admired, even
before I was able, from actual experience, to fully appre¬
ciate its very remarkable accuracy.

Strange to say, although frequently reprinted and trans¬
lated, there does not exist, so far as I am aware, any satis¬
factory edition as to general editing, notes, and so forth,
and this has, I hope, proved of advantage to me. For all
that, I cannot claim to have approached, even partially, an
ideally perfect edition ; but, to quote Bernier's own words
as applied to his map of The Mogol Empire, I prefer to
hope that I have produced a work ' not absolutely correct,
but merely less incorrect than others that I have seen.'
For instance, a copy of the Urdii translation made in 1875
by Colonel Henry Moore, and lithographed in two volumes
8vo, at Umritsur and Moradabad in 1886 and 1888 re¬
spectively, only reached my hands after the Bibliography
had been printed off. Nor have I been able as yet to
find any copy of a Lucknow reprint of the Delhi edition,
No. 22 of the list.

In my treatment of Indian proper names, and Indian
and Persian words generally, in my notes and elsewhere,
I have availed myself very liberally of the ' time-honoured
spelling' proviso or clause, laid down by authority, in
the rules which govern the transliteration of such words.

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