46 Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. [Jan. 



in large characters, and some words have their corresponding Persian 

 version given in Persian letters. References to the Persian text are 

 made with Persian figures. Quotations from the Persian text also 

 occur frequently, and occasionally Greek and Hebrew words are given 

 in their native characters, but in the whole range of a bulky book, 

 avowedly a translation of a Sanskrit work, Sanskrit letters occur only 

 fifteen or twenty times ; shewing clearly that the translator depended en- 

 tirely on his Persian text, and seldom referred to the Sanskrit original. 

 Evidently he was not a Sanskrit scholar, and was unable to make any 

 such reference. On one occasion he did so to ascertain the 160 (sic in MS.) 

 names of the sun, but owing to his want of knowledge of the Sanskrit, 

 he converted 108 names into 115. The error was so palpable, that he 

 could not overlook it, and yet unable to correct it, he excused himself 

 in a note in which he says : "In consequence of not knowing which 

 words are simple and which are compounds, I have here made the 

 names to be 115 instead of 108." In a subsequent note he says : 

 " Perhaps the whole together may fully make up the number 160 as 

 mentioned in the Persian translation." 



The translation was undertaken, it appears from a date on the 5th 

 page, on the 18th October, 1810, and carried on with occasional short 

 interruptions to the 3rd July, 1813, when it was dropped at the middle 

 of the fifth day's battle. The extracts, however, are not consecutive, but 

 taken at random from different parts of the Mahabharata. The work 

 of each day is separately dated, from which it appears that the trans- 

 lator did not generally write more than 2 or 3 pages, and often not 

 more than a page per day. This fact, coupled with the corrections and 

 the interlineations above referred to, leaves no doubt about the MS. 

 being the original writing of the translator and not a copy. 



The work is avowedly made up of " abstracts and translations," 

 principally from what is called u the great folio," meaning Vasant 

 Kae's Persian version, and occasionally from a MS. which is indica- I 

 ted by the words " Library copy." Neither of these originals is now 

 accessible to me, and in their absence, it is impossible to determine ; 

 what portions of the MS. are abstracts, and what are translations from j 

 those works. I have compared different parts of the translation with ! 

 Abul Fazl's Persian version, of which the Society possesses a good | 

 MS. in two volumes, but I can trace no correspondence. But 



