The influences which determined his literary activity were primarily European. As a student in Calcutta he had made acquaintance with the English classics, and later, while at University College, had read the poets insatiably. Nevertheless his first successes were achieved in his mother tongue. He wrote in Bengali poems and plays, historical and social novels, and aroused a storm of protest within the orthodox community of his Province by publishing a Bengali translation of the Rig Veda. In English, of which he had complete mastery, his first complete essay was a history of civilisation in Ancient India, which, though not a work of original research, fulfilled a useful purpose in its day. When freedom from Government service gave him the opportunity he set himself to writing the Economic History of India and India in the Victorian Age, the two together forming, his chief contribution to the subject which he, more than any other Indian of his time, had made his own. In these books, as in others of kindred theme and purpose, there is much criticism of British administration, strongly felt if temperately expressed. Apart from this, its more controversial side, the work of Romesh Dutt is valuable mainly in that it has helped to reveal to his own people no less than to ours, the spiritual riches of ancient India.

S. K. RATCLIFFE

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The following is a list of the, various edition of "The Ramayana:

"The Ramayana," edited by S. Goressio (with Italian translation). 10 vols. 1843-58, 1859-60 (Calcutta), 1888 (Bombay).
English translations: by Kirtee Bass. 5 vols. Serampore, 1802.
"The Ramayuna of Valmeeki, in the original Sungscrit, with a Prose Translation and Explanatory Notes." W. Carey and J. Marshman. 1806-10.
An English translation for "Nirvachanothara, Ramayanum" (i.e. the "Uttara Ramayana "attributed to Vulmiki, with Commentary). Madras, 1880.
Free English translation by R. T. H. Griffith. 5 vols. 1870-75.
Translation into English Prose. Edited by Manmatha Nath Dutt. 1889, 1892-94.
Condensed into English Verse by Romesh Dutt. 1899 (Temple Classics), 1900.

Works on:
Sir M. Williams, "Indian Epic Poetry, with full Analysis of the Ramayana and Mahabharata." 1863.
J. T. Wheeler, "History of India." 1867, &c.
J. C. Oman, "Struggles of the Dawn, the Stories of the Great Indian Epics, Ramayana," &c. 1893. "The Great Indian Epics," &c. 1894, 1899 (Bohn).

The following is a list of the various editions of " The Mahabharata":