I 



HI 



340 H. Gr. Raverty — Beply to 'Histy. and Geogr. of Bengal, No. III. 9 [No. 3, 



work. I have already shown, in my notes 6 and 4 to pages 697 and 711, 

 and in many other places of my Translation, what the Tabakat-i-Akbari is. 

 The Author in all probability saw the Tabakat-i-Nasiri, but, as I suppose, 

 he did not take the trouble to collate different copies, and contented himself 

 with one— for example the I. 0. L. MS. 1952, "a good old copy" too, 

 which one person, at least, styles an " autograph" — the short-comings of 

 the Tabakat-i-Akbari may be accounted for. Firishtah contains nothing 

 whatever — not a single event — respecting the Turk Sultans of the Mu'izzi 

 and Shamsi dynasties, but what is contained in the Tabakat-i-Akbari, even 

 to the poetical quotations and the blunders also. 



I do not propose to change the name of the " conqueror of Bengal" : 

 I do more. I do change it, without the least hesitation, on the authority of 

 the best extant copies of the text of the " Tabaqat," which work, as Mr, Bloch- 

 mann most correctly observes, " is the only authority we possess for this 

 period" and it will require positive proof to the contrary to make me give 

 up the point. Because a name has been written incorrectly before, on 

 wrong assumption, or on mere theories, and because the two names Muham- 

 mad and Bakht-yar have been handed down and repeated from one writer 

 to another as that of one man only, is there any reason why such error 

 should be obstinately stuck to through thick and thin ? 



But at the same time I must state that I have naught to gain or lose 

 by the change : I have no object in changing it, and only do so on the 

 " undoubted authority" of my author. The matter lies in a nut-shell : 

 either the father was called Bakht-yar, or he was not. If he was so called, 

 then he has hitherto had the credit for what his son performed. 



As to Muhammad with the kasrah of izdfat being correct, I fancy Mr. 

 Blochmann, even in a Muhammadan " School Register," [a great authority 

 certainly,] never found one person called Muhammad Mahmiid without the 

 last referred to his father — certainly not if a Musalman in his senses wrote 

 it down. But with regard to the " conqueror's" name, i. e. Muhammad, 

 and Bakht-yar, that is Bakht-yar-ud-Din, his father's name, the word bin 

 — son of — I first noticed in the oldest British Museum copy, one of the three 

 best I have had for my translation, and Professor Rieu, on whose words, 

 opinion, and experience in such matters, I place implicit confidence, considers 

 it a MS. of the 14th century, or about a century after the time that Minhaj- 

 ud-Din wrote. The word bin also occurs in the other British Museum MS., 

 and in the best St. Petersburg copy, which is another of the three I refer 

 to, and in the very old copy I have— which apparently looks, but may not 

 be, much older than either of the other two — the whole of the headings are 

 pointed, and in this last MS. the word bin does not occur, for at this par- 

 ticular place, as well as in a few other instances where bin, as in the case 

 of Muhammad bin Suri, of whom more anon, is subsequently given, the 

 bin has clearly been left out, accidentally, by the copyist. 



