Excerpt from The Legends of the Panja?b, Vol. 3
It is nearly twenty years ago since I made up my mind to publish by instalments in original and translation my collection of the legends told in the Panjab. The work proceeded regularly for two years, and somewhat irregularly for two years more, but I could only manage to publish at long intervals during the succeeding six, since when I have been able to publish nothing. The exigencies of official life in India are responsible for the irregularity of publication, for the fact is that, in the matter of writing books about India, the official proposes but the Government disposes. My own experience has been merely that of others similarly circumstanced, for in the midst of my self-imposed labours I found myself transferred back to my old Province of Burma and then to the Andaman Islands, where I have had to work amidst associations so alien to those in the Panjab and have been occupied by duties so numerous and absorbing as to render it impossible to continue in any form the work of publishing the Legends. This is an old story in India, for to the preface of the third edition (1823) of Sir William Jones' Grammar of the Persian Language there is attached a significant note: - "My professional duties having wholly engaged my attention and induced me not only to abandon Oriental Literature, but even to efface as far as possible the very traces of it from my memory, I committed the conduct and revisal of this Edition of my Grammar and the composition of the index to Mr. Richardson."
I have, therefore, determined to let the matter rest where it is and to satisfy myself with the completion of three volumes, although it has happened that I have been able to print only exactly half of what I had collected.
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