(ii)
Patriot was found bound by chance all but three of the issues of the Indian Field in which Bankim's novel had appeared. Thus the historian of Bengali literature has reason to be grateful for a binder's mistake.
This first serious work of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee is now made accessible to a wider circle of readers than could possibly consult the files of the long-defunct Indian Field. As regards the missing first three chapters of Bankim's original, it has been possible to substitute for them a version as close to Bankim's own as could be desired. At a later period of his life Bankim himself had begun to prepare a Bengali version of his first novel. But he did not proceed further than the first seven chapters of the English original. This fragment was completed in his own way by his nephew, Mr. Sachis Chandra Chatterjee, who did not know that the fragment was actually a Bengali rendering of the English original, Rajmohan's Wife. He, on the contrary, believed it to be an entirely new work and gave to the joint production the name of Vari-Vahini. It is by means of a translation of the first three chapters of this Bengali book that the missing beginning of Bankim's English novel has been here supplied. Rajmohan's Wife, as published by us now, thus comprises Bankim's own original English from Chapter IV to the "Conclusion," and our English rendering of Bankim's Bengali version from Chapter I to III.
Brajendra Nath Banerji
