140 Badaoni and his Works. [No. 8, 



death of these two friends so affected Badaoni, that he resolved not 

 to cultivate a new friendship with any other man and to look upon 

 his bereavement as a warning from God. He says (p. 397, metre 

 KKafif)- 



Thou art anxious to listen to a good sermon : 



The death of thy friend is a sufficient warning. 

 A few months later, Badaoni again attracted Akbar 's attention. 

 Two days before the 10th Rajab, when the Emperor celebrated the 

 fortieth nauruz since his accession, on which day promotions used to 

 be made, Akbar " sat at the window (jharolcahj of the State hall, and 

 called me ; and turning to Abulfazl, he said, " He is a heavenly- 

 minded, young man, with the air of the pufi about him ; but he is 

 such a bigoted lawyer, that no sword is powerful enough to cut 

 through the neck vein of his bigotry." Shaikh Abulfazl said, " In 

 which book has he made the remark of which Your Majesty spoke ?" 

 "In this very Razmndmah"* replied Akbar; " and last night I asked 

 Naqib Khan about it." " Then," said Abulfazl, " he must have been 

 very careless." I now thought it necessary to go close up to the 

 window, and represented to His Majesty that I had strictly adhered 

 to the duties of a translator ; I had put down without alteration 

 whatever the Pandits had told me, and I was ready to bear the conse- 

 quences, should it be proved that I had put in words of my own. 

 Shaikh Abulfazl took my part, and the Emperor remained silent." 



" The passage in my translation of the Mahabharat to which His 

 Majesty objected, contains the last words of a dying Hindu sage, who 

 advises all near him to give up carelessness, and only think of God : 

 men should be wise and should not trust to knowledge acquired, but 

 to good deeds done by them. Learning by itself was vain ; men should 

 refrain from doing wicked actions, and ought to believe that every deed 

 would once meet with its reward — after which words I had put the 

 following hemistich (metre Ramal) — 



for Kathri, and on p. 183, 1. 2, read Shdham 'Ali for Shaham 'AH. Nizami 

 finished his book in 1001, which Badaoni expressed by the word ^AslJai (1001), 

 — a very bappy tdrikh. 



* Akbar had often the Mahabharat, or Razmndmah, as he called it read out to 

 him. Prom the above passage it seems that Badaoni in the portion which he 

 translated, had entered, or was accused to have entered, a remark offensive to 

 the religious feelings of the Emperor. 



