Books about India by intelligent travellers have their uses, and books by Europeans who have lived for years in the country and studied the people are still more valuable, but it is only a native of India who can really show us Indian life as it is.  There are already several books in English, by educated Indians, which give us valuable insight into what was once the unknown of Indian domestic and social life.  Mr. T. Ramakrishna, whose “Life in an Indian Village” is introduced to the notice of the British public by Sir M.E.  Grant Duff, has produced a series of very interesting sketches of the more important features of village life in the South of India.  They will be found to be very readable, sometimes amusing, always interesting and instructive.  Any one who reads this book with intelligence and care will be able to form for himself a very accurate picture of a Madras village, and to understand the composition of the village community, which is the basis of the whole framework of Indian social life.—­Scotsman (Edinburgh).

Mr. Ramakrishna’s book is picturesque and sympathetic.—­Manchester Guardian.

A well-written book, and one which gives a realistic description of a condition of life which is the outcome of centuries of isolation,—­Leeds Mercury.

It is not an easy thing to acquire a clear conception of a life and a civilisation other in every respect to our own, and it may be reasonably questioned if one Englishman in a thousand has more than a very vague idea of what life in an Indian village is like.  Here is a pleasant and graphic little volume.  He may acquire that knowledge from the sketches of an Indian gentleman who knows the subject through and through, and has, moreover, so much of European culture that he is able to present the facts in a form that will not seem strange or incredible.—­Birmingham Post.

A volume issued by Mr. T. Fisher Unwin, “Life in an Indian Village,” is a sample of the kind of book relating to our Eastern Empire that we should like to see multiplied.  It is the production of a scholarly native, T. Ramakrishna, B.A., who writes excellent idiomatic English without the slightest tendency to Johnsonian eloquence.—­Christian Leader (Glasgow).

The manners and customs of the people are vividly reflected in these pages, and a picturesque account is given of a number of notabilities, such as the physician, &c.—­Speaker (London).

The book cannot fail to fulfil the author’s desire in exciting a deeper interest in the people whom he so sympathetically introduces to the British public.—­Independent (London).

Written with much naivete.—­British Weekly (London).

The author of this book deserves our thanks and congratulations.  Himself a highly educated native of the Madras Presidency, he has drawn a series of pictures of the village life of Southern India....  The occupations, the recreations, the religion, the distribution of labour, the recurrence of feast and festival, with much more, are all told in amusing style and with such graphic power as to leave a vivid impression upon the reader’s mind.—­Bookseller (London).