India has had a hoary past, and India was once the scene of a civilisation which may, in some sense, be qualified as great. But the ordinary run of Indians have very wrong notions of the extent of that past and of the type of that civilisation. We shall endeavour, in this short paper, to present a true notion of the one and of the other. The ancient records of India, scattered throughout its Sanskrit and Tamil literatures will be our guides in this...