From Adam's Peak to Elephanta : sketches in Ceylon and India / by Edward Carpenter.

  • Edward Carpenter
Date:
1903
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: From Adam's Peak to Elephanta : sketches in Ceylon and India / by Edward Carpenter. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    P R E ¥ ACE If asked to write a book about his own country and people a man might well give up the task as hopeless—yet to do the same about a distant land in which he has only spent a few months is a thing which the average traveler quite cheerfully undertakes. I suppose this may be looked upon as another illustration of the great fact that the less one knows of a matter the easier it is to write or talk about it. But there is, it is sometimes said, a certain merit of their own in first mpressions ; and I trust that this may appear in the present case. Certainly, though there are many things that are missed in a first glance, there are some things that stand out clearer then than later. In the following pages I have tried to keep as far as possible to the relation of things actually seen and heard, and not to be betrayed into doubtful generalisations. It Is so easy in the case of a land like India, which is as large as Europe (without Russia) and at least as multi- farious in its peoples, languages, creeds, customs, and manners, to make the serious mistake of supposing that what is true of one locality necessarily applies to the whole vast demesne, that I must specially warn the reader not only against falling into this error himself, but against the possibility of my having fallen into it in places. As far as actual experience of life in Ceylon and India is concerned 1 have perhaps been fortunate ; not only in being- introduced (through the kindness of local friends) into circles of traditional teaching which are often closed against the English, and in so getting to know something of the esoteric religious lore of South India ; but also in obtaining some interesting glimpses behind the scenes of the Hindu ceremonial. I have too had the good luck to find friends and familiar
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