This is a new edition of a classic study of Water Gods and the sacredness that humans have had for water since time immemorial.

Excerpt from the preface:

I have sought to indicate what scope there is for such research work, and I have devoted a special chapter to Sir Laurence Gomme’s luminous analysis of the water cults prevailing in Britain and its isles with a view to indicating the methods of research adopted by him.

If we follow the same lines in tracing the ancestry of the Indian customs and beliefs, we may hope to throw some fresh light on the cultural history of the ancestors, or at all events the immediate predecessors, of the people among whom we now find them prevailing. I do not profess to have accomplished anything of the kind in this book. It is really not want of time so much as the consciousness of sheer inability to do justice to the theme that has deterred me from launching upon a scientific survey of the varying forms of water-worship.

Circumstances permitting, after further study and research, I may venture to essay it and place before the public a more studied and comprehensive volume on the subject, meanwhile this little book will not have been published in vain if it leads some student of anthropology to embark on such a survey and I shall be better pleased indeed to see this fascinating subject comprehensively dealt with by one of the masters of the science of folklore.