138 Badaoni and his Works. [No. 3, 



The translation into Persian of the JdmV i Hashidi, part of which 

 was done by Badaoni, was completed by other learned men of Akbar's 

 Court under the ' superintendence' (istigwdbj of Abulfazl himself ; but 

 unfortunately no copies of it appear to be now extant, which is much 

 to be regretted considering the comparative scarcity of MSS. of the 

 Arabic original. [Vide Morley's Catalogue.] 



Badaoni was thus restored to favour and the possession of his 

 thousand big'hahs. It seems as if after his restoration, the religious 

 feeling which his past misfortunes and exclusion from Akbar's Court 

 had called forth, had disappeared and given way to levity and spiri- 

 tual indifference. He may have found it necessary to assume a more 

 conciliating attitude towards the ' heretics' of the Court, and the 

 members of Akbar's ' Divine Faith,' who were in office and had partly 

 brought about his pardon. He may have imitated the example of 

 his friend Nizamuddin the historian, who, though a pious Muslim, 

 managed to rise higher and higher in Akbar's favour by keeping his 

 religious views to himself. But whatever the real cause of this 

 inroad of worldliness may have been, Badaoni, towards the end 

 of 1002, repented and thought it necessary to enter the fact in his 

 history. " In this year," he says (p. 395), "I was punished by suc- 

 cessive blows of misfortunes and lashes of adversity ; but God 

 created in me a new spirit, and led me to repent of the several wanton 

 pastimes in which I had indulged, and the crimes which I had fre- 

 quently committed against the orders of our Law. I acknowledge the 

 viciousness of my deeds. 



Elliot, Index, p. 256. The words on p. 255, ' He (Shaikh Faizf) is commonly 

 called the " chief of Poets," but he was in fact a mere Poetaster', are not in 

 Badaoni, neither in the printed edition, nor in the MS. which Elliot used. The 

 $>ajra,. on p. 256 commencing, ' He had composed poetry for forty years, &c.' 

 conveys, in Elliot's version, an impression very different from what Badaoni 

 intends to convey, and is diametrically opposed to another passage (II, 396) 

 where 'Abdul Qadir clearly says that ' Faizi's Nal Daman is a Masnawi the like of 

 which, for the last three hundred years, no poet of Hindustan, after Mir Khusrau 

 of Dihli, has composed.' The sentence which Badaoni pronounces on Eaizi's 

 poetry — and every one who has read even portions of Faizi's Diwan will 

 agree 'with him — is that he is somewhat frigid, and deficient in that soft 

 and plaintive sentimentalism of modern Persian Literature, compared with 

 which the Byronism of England and the Wertherism of Germany are nothing. 

 Faizi's thoughts are grand and striking, and his language is classical de 

 rigew, but his poetry is so full of Shathiydt, Fakhriydt, and Kufriydt (vide 

 my ' Prosody of the Persians'), that " every one admires but no oue remembers 

 his verses." The extracts selected by Abulfazl of his brother's poetry in 

 the Ain (at the end of second book) fully bear out what Badaoni says, and 

 explain why Badaoni, though he censures, can yet warmly admire. 



