The Critic in the Orient

by George Hamlin Fitch

INDIA

The literature about India is very extensive, so that only a few of the best books may be mentioned here. To the tourist the one indispensable book is Murray's Handbook for Travelers in India, Ceylon and Burma, which is well provided with maps and plans of cities. For general description, among the best works are Malcolm, Indian Pictures and Problems; Scidmore, Winter India; Forrest, Cities of India; Kipling, From Sea to Sea; Stevens, In India; Arnold, India Revisited; Low, A Vision of India (describing the journey of the Prince of Wales in 1905-6); Caine, Picturesque India; Things Seen in India.

For the history of India, some of the best books are Lane-Poole, Mediæval India and The Mogul Emperors; Fanshawe, Delhi, Past and Present; McCrindle, Ancient India; Rhys-Davids, British India; Roberts, Forty-one Tears in India; Holmes, History of the Indian Mutiny; Innes, The Sepoy Revolt; Curzon, Russia in Central Asia; Colquhoun, Russia Against India.

On the religions of India: Rhys-Davids, Buddhism; Warren, Buddhism in Translations; Clarke, Ten Great Religions; Hopkins, Religions of India; Arnold, The Light of Asia.

EGYPT

Egypt has changed so much during the last twenty years that books written before that time are practically obsolete. The dahabiyeh is no longer used for Nile travel, except by tourists of means and large leisure, since the tourist steamers make the trip up and down the Nile in one quarter the time consumed by the old sailing vessels. Cairo has been transformed into a European city and even Luxor is modernized, with its immense hotels and its big foreign winter colony.

Bædeker's Egypt is the best guide book, but be sure that you get the latest edition, as the work is revised every two or three years. The introductory essays in this volume on Egyptian history, religion, art and Egyptology are well worth careful reading. The descriptions of the ruins and the significance of many of the hieroglyphs are helpful. Of general descriptive works on Egypt, some of the best are Penfield, Present Day Egypt (1899); Jeremiah Lynch, Egyptian Sketches, a book by a San Franciscan which gives a series of readable pictures of Cairo and the voyage up the Nile; Holland, Things Seen in Egypt.

Of Egypt, before it was transformed by the British, standard works are Lane, Cairo Fifty Tears Ago; Lady Duff-Gordon, Letters From Egypt (covering the period from 1862 to 1869). Good historical works are Lane-Poole, Egypt, and the Story of Cairo; Ebers, Egypt, Descriptive, Historical, and Picturesque.

Of the administration of England in Egypt, the best book is Lord Cromer's Modern Egypt. Other works are Milner, England in Egypt; Colvin, The Making of Modern Egypt. The story of Gordon's death at Khartoum is well told in Stevens, With Kitchener to Khartoum and Churchill, The River War.

Several valuable works on Egyptian archeology have been written by Maspero and Flinders-Petrie. Maspero's Art in Egypt, which is lavishly illustrated, will be valuable as a guide book. Flinders-Petrie's Egyptian Decorative Art is worth reading.