976 Account of the Town and Palace of ' Feerosabad. [Sept. 



of Delili. Considerable confusion has thus naturally arisen, and it has 

 become a matter of great difficulty to identify many names and places, 

 which nothing but a careful local investigation can overcome. Translators 

 again,* frequently affording the only means of obtaining information, 

 have contributed considerably to increase the existing confusion, by 

 attributing little or no importance to the accurate details in their 

 original ; they probably looked on these details as of mere local interest, 

 and consequently slurred them over carelessly, or omitted them altoge- 

 ther in a very culpable manner, while the wretched orthography, adopted 

 by some of those who have been otherwise more careful, has so entirely 

 obscured the original and proper nomenclature, as to render it almost a 

 matter of impossibility to recognize, in the translations, names of places 

 and persons which, would be familiar under the original, very different, 

 and perfectly, intelligible garb. 



We find even Bishop Heber, generally a better informed traveller, 

 and more careful investigator, than many of those who preceded him, 

 and than more who came after him, writing as follows of some of the 

 remains he saw, and how grievously he was misinformed on this parti- 

 cular point will be seen by all ; that he was so in several other in- 

 stances, will be shown hereafter. 



By means, however, of local researches of the nature previously allud- 

 ed to, continued perseveringly, and with an unity of purp'ose that will, 

 it is to be hoped, characterize the proceedings of our Society, we shall be 

 enabled, in time, to prepare, from the materials in progress, a respect- 

 able f( Hand Book of Dehli," in which the traveller will be furnished 

 with more authentic accounts, than now exist, or at least are generally 

 accessible, of the various buildings and ruins about Dehli, and which it 

 may be desirable for him to examine if more than a mere sight-seer, 

 so as to understand something at least of the former state of this coun- 

 try, and not have to wander through the mazy mass of ancient remains 

 in almost utter ignorance of the date of their erections, the object with 

 which they were built, the name of the founder, and the date and 

 occasion of their destruction or decay, gazing upon them, in fact, with 

 the undefined feelings of a child looking down into a dark passage, 

 totally ignorant of its extent. 



" In our way, one mass of ruins, larger than the rest, was pointed out 

 * Col. Briggs is u brilliant exception. 



