468 



Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. 



[No. 4, 





" The history of the greater portion of the earlier periods we shall al- 

 ready have placed in the hands of the public, in the histories of Min- 

 haj al-Din and Zia al-Barni, far earlier and possibly far better sources 

 of historic evidence than those consulted by Abd al-Qadir i Badaoni : 

 we have thought it therefore undesirable to go over the same ground 

 while the history of other periods remained uncompleted. I think it 

 well worth consideration, however, whether in conjunction with this 

 work, we should not publish in lieu thereof a certain portion of the 

 Tabaqat i Akbari which Abd al Qadir professes only to have abridged, 

 and which all later historians have made such good use of. Sir H. 

 Elliot in his Mohammadan Historians, says that " notwithstanding 

 Ferishtah pronounces his history incomplete, he has borrowed from it 

 very freely." But Sir H. Elliot's translator (for he generally marked 

 his passages, and gave them to others who had more time for translat- 

 ing than he had,) has misinterpreted the passage, for what Eerishtah 

 does say, has quite the opposite sense. He says " of all the Histories 

 of Hindustan that have come into my hands, I have not found a single 

 one complete, except the History of Nizam al-Din Ahmad i-jSTakhsabi 3 

 meaning this " Tabaqat," the only thing wanting according to Ferish- 

 tah, being the additional information which he himself possessed and 

 which we may assume he supplied in his own large work. 



" It would seem hardly fair, viewing the question of character from 

 that even, disinterested and unbiassed point, and with that jealousy 

 proper to the honest and truthful historian, to publish a history, the 

 greatest value of which consists in ' correcting by its prevalent tone 

 of censure and disparagement the fulsome eulogium of the Akbar 

 Namah,' without, at the same time, supplying the panegyric; the 

 more especially as I find in Badaoni' s history, abundant proof that 

 his religious bigotry was such as to render it difficult for him to give 

 an unbiassed and impartial sketch of the character, or to draw right 

 conclusions from the actions of so tolerant a monarch as Akbar. No 

 recommendation has yet been made on this subject to the Society but 

 I hope soon to bring it forward. 



" We will then have to consider the reigns of the three great succes- 

 sors of Akbar, Jahan-Gir, Shah- Jahan, and Aurang-Zeb, during which, 

 including the reign of Akbar himself, the glory of the Mohammadan 

 power in India may be said to have attained its zenith. But for this 



