It is one of the excellent characteristics of Pandit Natesa Sastri that he particularises where necessary and generalises only where it is safe to do so.
It seems hardly necessary to point out or emphasise how specially valuable to foreign students are Pandit Natesa Sastri’s works, and others similar to them. The bounden duty laid upon all Europeans living in this country and earning their livelihood in it, of striving to understand and appreciate the people among whom they dwell, needs no argument or demonstration. Such knowledge and appreciation cannot be acquired without careful study and observation. But now-a-days, at any rate, he who runs may read many excellent treatises both by natives of India and by Europeans on various aspects and characteristies of Hinduism and the Hindus ; and for a general work-a-day knowledge of the Hindus there is no more useful, and at the same time more interesting, study than that of current beliefs and practices such as are described by Pandit Natesa Sastri in this little volume.
9th December, 1902.
