190 4.] 
J. F. Fanthome —A Forgotten City. 
277 
oilier games, to relieve and divert his mind. It was, in short, if we 
may so term it, a hunting-seat, or, what in Europe would perhaps he 
called, a villa or country-seat; but something more pretentious than 
the villas at Rupbas or Bari still extant. It seems nevertheless to have 
been a place of greater magnitude than a villa, for it rose in a very 
short time to be a city, which derived its importance and its magnifi¬ 
cence from the occasional residence in its midst of the Court of one 
of the greatest potentates the world has seen. 
The Royal wish having been expressed, palaces and baths and tem¬ 
ples and mansions, and other handsome edifices soon came out of the 
builders’ hands. The courtiers, encouraged thereto, followed suit, and 
within a very short time a city rose, excelling in the number of its 
inhabitants, and in the gorgeousness of its public and private edi¬ 
fices most of the Indian capitals of the present day; for though the 
extent or the dimensions of the inhabited site are not given, it is safe 
to assume that it was in every respect equal to the requirements of a 
magnificent Court, the pomp and pageantry of its appointments, and 
the vast multitudes of followers that usually formed the camps of the 
Mu gh al Emperors, as we find recorded in other places ; not to mention 
the calls, public business, manufactures, commerce, and curiosity, and 
travel make upon space and surroundings. 
Akbar ascended the throne in the year 1556 A.D. JSTagarcain was 
therefore founded in the year 1565 ; but when BadayunI wrote his 
“ History,” to which a date may be assigned prior to the conclusion of 
the reign in 1605, Nagarcain had already ceased to be a city: not a 
trace of it was left. The fact is almost incredible, but I take it as I 
find it recorded in the pages of one whose comments upon the events of 
this reign were not always favourable. 
I shall now proceed to quote from Abul Fazl’s Akbarnama in 
support of my description; the translation is mine. 
“ To relate the event of the founding of Nagarcain is to gain the 
prize (caiigan) of pleasure with the aid of good fortune. The Con¬ 
structor of the great wonders of creation and the Wise Designer of the 
grand edifices of the variegated world has determined with His perfect 
foreknowledge and infinite power that the being of His Majesty shall 
every moment prove the means of demonstrating the celestial arts, and 
that in every place His Majesty’s ideas of beauty may be adopted 
as a correct examplar for the decoration of cities. Hence His Majesty 
turned his attention—the beautifier of the world—to adorn and embel¬ 
lish the village of KalakrjjJi. The whole area of this village, from 
the purity of its climate and the luxuriance of the soil, and its plains, 
is by contrast much to be preferred to any other laud of pleasantness; 
J. i. 36 
