A good deal of trouble seems to be taken to keep the entries reiating to particular villages together or, at any rate, to facilitate reference when entries relating to the same village have got into different parts of the book. There seems, moreover, to be a certain amount of system employed in grouping villages together so as to connect with one another entries relating to different branches of one and the same family residing in different villages The entries themselves consist very largely of pedigrees or fragments of pedigrees sometimes purporting be made by, or at the dictation of, a particular member of the family concerned on the occasion of a visit paid to the Ganges at Soran in a specified year and month, sometimes merely jotted down underneath some other entry, without any specific record either of the occasion or of the particular person on whose authority the entry is made. Of course, the book is not, and does not profess to be, a systematic record of family pedigrees. The pages are not consecutively numbered. It is admitted that the binding is unstitched and fresh pages inserted whenever the panda" finds it convenient to do so. Blank spaces, and even blank pages, occur from time to time in the body of the book. It is admitted that if a page gets very much worn or tittered, the "panda" will copy out what he can decipher of the entries upon it on to a fresh page and will insert the same in its place. It must, also be borne in mind that the "panda" does not hold himself responsible for the identification of pilgrims who appear before him and represent themselves as being members of such and such a family.”
