TRANSLATORS PREFACE.
The English translation of these tales has been made by special request, to meet repeated demands for a translation of the text as edited by the late Dr. Duncan Forbes. The aim of the Translator has been to produce a work which would enable the student to study the original with facility and accuracy. It being considered that few save students who are compelled to study the Hindi original would be likely to peruse the work, the translation has been made as literal as it was possible to make it without doing unpardonable violence to English idiom. All difficulties have been boldly, if not successfully, met; and explanatory and other notes have been added, wherever the text appeared to call for such. The study of the translation must not be supposed to dispense with that of the Grammar of the language; it will be found, however, to prove of the highest utility to a student who has mastered the elementary principles of Grammar, and uses it—not as a mere “crib” but—for the purpose of discovering what light it sheds on the application of those principles.