166 
H. Beveridge —The Mother of Jahangir. 
[No. 3, 
It will be observed that Mr. Blochmann is not positive abont 
Bihari Mali’s dangbter being Jahangir’s mother. He only says that 
there is little doubt of it. I think that the passage from Jahangir’s 
Memoirs, and the tradition about Jodh Bai show that Bihari Mali’s 
daughter was not Jahangir’s mother, and if the latter was a Hindu, I 
think that we have no choice but to accept the tradition that a lady 
of the house of Jodhpur was the mother. Perhaps, however, it has been 
too readily assumed that she was a Hindu. I have already observed 
that it is very unlikely that a Hindu lady would be taken for her con¬ 
finement to the house of a Muhammadan priest, and I now proceed to 
offer reasons for holding that Jahangir’s mother was a Muhammadan, 
and no other than Salimah Sultan Begam, the widow of Bairam Khan. 
There is a passage in Elliot’s History of India, Yol. VI, p. 404 which, 
if it can be fully relied upon, settles the question of who was Jahangir’s 
mother. We are there told that Nur Jahan was brought to court after the 
death of her husband Sher Afgan, and entrusted by Jahangir to “ the 
keeping of his own royal mother.” How we know that Nur Jahan, 
when brought from Burdwan to Agra by Jahangir’s orders, was placed 
in the keeping either of Salimah Sultan Begam, or of Sultan Raqiyah 
Begam. The Iqbalnama of Muhammad Khan, and Khafi Khan say 
Salimah Sultan, and Mr. Blochmann and Muhammad Hadi (Elliot, VI, 
p. 398) say Raqiyah. But the latter borrows his account from Muhammad 
Khan, and if the Bibliotheca Indica edition is to be trusted, Muhammad 
Hadi or Elliot has mistaken the word raqabah “ a slave” for Raqiyah. 
The original in the Iqbalnama, p. 56, is as follows— 
l j) aIs.3 j\ dS i ^I 
♦. •• 
I do not feel sure of the meaning of the words wdlidah sababi 
khesh which Elliot seems to have rendered “his own royal mother,” 
but surely they mean something more than that she was his father’s 
wife. Raqiyah was alive and probably others of Akbar’s wives. \\ by 
then should an expression bo applied to Salimah which was not at all 
distinctive of her ? 
The expression is repeated with a variation by Khafi Khan, I, p. ‘267, 
who calls Salimah the mddar nisbat-i-khud of Jahangir. 
Klphinstone also, 4th ed., p. 484, tells us that Jahangir placed Niir 
Jahan “among the attendants of his mother.” His account is evidently 
taken from Khafi Khan, and represents the view taken by the translator 
whom ho studied. 
That Salimah was closely connected with Jahangir and deeply 
interested in him is apparent from the fact that she went to him, when 
