This volume completes the translation of the Muntakhabu-'t-tawārī kh of ‘Abdu-'l-Qādir b. Mulūk Shāh, al-Badāonī, in the Bibliotheca Indica series. Its sources are those enumerated by Lieutenant-Colonel G. S. A. Ranking in the preface to his translation of volume I.

It was begun as long ago as 1897, but owing to the constant pressure of official duties was not finished until 1909, and even then could not be immediately printed owing to difficulties in the way of allotting funds for the expenses of publication. The index and list of errata have only lately been finished.

Frequent interruptions in the work are responsible for some inconsistencies in transliteration—such, for instance, as Shamsu-'d-din and Shams-ud-din, Khāja, Kh'āja, and Khẉāja. My excuse for the frequent omission of any equivalent for the letter in transliterating the latter word is that the transla­tion was made, for the most part, in India, where the frequent pronunciation of this mute letter was so offensive that at the time I judged it better to preserve the correct pronunciation by omitting it. I confess that this is not a very good excuse for the omission of a letter, but it is the best that I can offer.

I have nothing to add to Lieutenant-Colonel Ranking's remarks on the difficulty of translating from Persian, except that they apply with peculiar force to an author like Badāonī, writing in a language not his own. His style is stilted and inelegant, as must nearly always be the case with an author labouring under this disadvantage, and he persists in one error —the misuse of the word , which means “ungrudging emulation,” but is always used by him in the sense of “envy” —but it is free from the bombastic prolixity and gross affecta­tion of that of his compatriot and contemporary, Shaikh Abū-'l-Faẓl.

As this volume of the historian's work consists to a great extent of literary criticism, I have been careful to translate both his text and the excerpts of verse quoted by him as literally as possible, in order to convey some idea, however faint, of his standard of literary excellence. In only one or two passages, to which reference is made in notes, have I ventured to modify expressions which in an English dress would have been merely ridiculous; but I am conscious that many of the passages which I have rendered more exactly will appear grotesque. This was unavoidable, and is due partly to the wide divergence between the standards of taste of Persian writers of the sixteenth and English readers of the twentieth centuries, and partly to Badāonī's own defects.

A few passages are so indecent that I have been constrained to veil them in such disguise as a dead language affords. To this practice it may be objected that it calls attention to what is unseemly, but a book of this nature will seldom be taken up but by genuine seekers after knowledge, who are not likely to suffer harm from the obscenities of Badāonī, or of those whom he quotes.

Interruptions in the work of translation are also responsible for a rather long list of errata, for which, and for other imperfec­tions I crave the indulgence of my readers.

W. H.

TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN.

April 7, 1924.