179:1 In attempting to verify the places or people specified in the text, various difficulties are to be encountered, which must serve to apologize for but partial success. Some are inherent in the subject, such as the changes which have taken place in the topography of India since the lists were compiled, and the imperfectness of the specification itself: states and tribes and cities have disappeared, even from recollection, and some of the natural features of the country, especially the rivers, have undergone a total alteration. Buchanan (Description of Eastern Hindustan), following Rennell over the same ground at an interval of some thirty or forty years, remarks that many of the streams laid down in the Bengal Atlas (the only series of maps of India yet published, that can be regarded as of authority) are no longer to be traced. Then the lists which are given are such mere catalogues, that they afford no clue to verification beyond names; and names have been either changed or so corrupted, as to be no longer recognizable. On the other hand, much of the difficulty arises from our own want of knowledge. Scattered through the Puráńas and other works, the names given in the topographical lists recur with circumstances which fix their locality; but these means of verification have not yet been sufficiently investigated. There are also geographical treatises in Sanscrit, which there is reason to believe afford much accurate and interesting information: they are not common. Col. Wilford speaks of having received a number from Jaypur, but upon his death they disappeared. After a considerable interval some of his MSS. were purchased for the Calcutta Sanscrit College, but by far the larger portion of his collection had been dispersed. A few leaves only on geographical subjects were found, from which I translated and published a chapter on the geography of some of the districts of Bengal: (Calcutta Quarterly Magazine, Dec. 1824:) the details were accurate and valuable, though the compilation was modern. Notwithstanding these impediments, however, we should be able to identify at least mountains and rivers to a much greater extent than is now practicable, if our maps were not so miserably defective in their nomenclature. None of our surveyors or geographers have been Oriental scholars. It may be doubted if any of them have been conversant with the spoken language of the country: they have consequently put down names at p. 180 random, according to their own inaccurate appreciation of sounds carelessly, vulgarly, and corruptly uttered; and their maps of India are crowded with appellations which bear no similitude whatever either to past or present denominations. We need not wonder that we cannot discover Sanscrit names in English maps, when, in the immediate vicinity of Calcutta, Barnagore represents Varáhanagar, Dakshineswar is metamorphosed into Duckinsore,and Ulubaría is Anglicised into Willoughbruy. Going a little farther off, we have Dalkisore for Darikeswarí, Midnapore for Medinipur, and a most unnecessary accumulation of consonants in Caughmahry for Kákamárí. There is scarcely a name in our Indian maps that does not afford proof of extreme indifference to accuracy in nomenclature, and of an incorrectness in estimating sounds, which is in some degree, perhaps, a national defect.