ACCOUNTS, &C., OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM. I3 



Oriental Manuscripts. 



Dr. Rieu has tlie honour of reporting to the Trustees on the progress of work in his 

 Department, and the additions made thereunto in the year 1878, as follows : 



I. — Arrangement and Cataloguing. 



The final revision and transcription for press of the Persian Catalogue hast been carried 

 on through the sections entitled, " General History of India, Sultans of Dehli, Timurides, 

 Local History of India, Biography, and Lives of Saints." 



Fifteen sheets of the same catalogue (signed GGr — XX) have been passed through 

 the press. 



Detailed descriptions have been prepared of 278 manuscripts, viz.. Or. 1619-1896, for 

 the Special Catalogues. 



Three hundred and two manuscripts, viz., Or. 1595-1896, have been labelled and 

 entered into the Descriptive List of Oriental MSS. 



The Manuscripts marked Or. 1491-1565 have been incorporated into the Indices of the 

 Arabic Catalogue. 



The Manuscripts acquired in 1877 have been entered into the Oriental Register, the 

 classed Oriental Inventory, and the Reading Room Copy of the Descriptive List of 

 Oriental Manuscripts. 



The unbound papei's forming part of the Elliot Collection have been sorted and 

 arranged into volumes. 



Three hundred and sixty-five Manuscripts have been folio'd and stamped, and 413 have 

 been bound and placed on the shelves. 



II . — Acquisitions, 



The number of Manuscripts added during the year to the Oriental Collection is 467, 

 viz., 446 by purchase, and 21 by donation, as follows : — 



Persian- - - - - - - - -412 



Arabic ---------15 



Japanese -- - - - - - -11 



Hindustani --------6 



Pali 4 



Hebrew -1------2 



Ethiopic ----_--_2 



Syriac ---------1 



Sanscrit _--__-__i 



Malayalma -------- 1 



Panjabi ---------I 



Turkish 1 



Total - - - 467 



An acquisition of exceptional importance made during the year is the collection foi*med 

 by the late Sir Henry Miers Elliot, k.c.b.. Foreign Secretary to the Government of 

 India. During an official residence of upwards of 20 years in India Sir H. Elliot was 

 actively engaged in the task of collecting and compiling all the procurable materials for 

 the history of that country under the Mohammedan rule. The results of his research 

 have been in part embodied in a posthumous woik entitled " The History of India, as 

 told by its own Historians," and comprising in eight large volumes detailed accounts of 

 143 historical works, with extracts from their contents in English. Sir H. Elliot's collec- 

 tion contains, besides the original texts of nearly all those works, a large number of local 

 histories, biographies, collections of letters, geographical treatises, etc., illustrating Indian 

 history, and some works on other subjects. It consists of 421 manuscripts, mostly Persian, 

 and a lai-ge quantity of unbound papei s, partly notices on historical manuscripts preserved 

 in various Indian libraries, partly translations of historical works prepared for Sir 

 H. Elliot. The following are a few of the more important manuscripts : 



Hadikat al- AkrdTm, an extensive geogi^aphical work treating especially of India, by 

 Allah yar Balgrami. 



Tarikh i Baihaki, a history of Sultan MasTid GhazuavT ; several co^^ies. 



TarTkh i Mubarak-shahl, or history of the Sultans of Dehli ; brought down to A.H. 

 838 ; a very rare work. 



Vrdvi 'at i MushtakT, a history of the Afghan dynasties of India, by Eizk Ullah 

 Mushtrdd ; 16th century. 



A new recension of the memoirs of Babar, by Shaikh Zain. 



1 70. B ^^ A new 



