When the Asiatic Society of Bengal did me the honour of inviting me to translate the Akbarnāma, I replied that I doubted my ability to make a complete translation, and suggested that I might edit the manuscript version by Lieutenant Chalmers. My suggestion was accepted, and I accordingly obtained from the Royal Asiatic Society the loan of the Chalmers' manuscript and permission to print it. I soon found, however, that the translation was too abridged to be made the basis of my work, and that it was necessary to execute a new version. Chalmers' manuscript was of great service to Elphinstone and Count Noer, and it has also been of much use to myself, but there are many gaps in it, and Abul Faẓl's language has throughout been greatly com­pressed. One gap near the beginning extends to over ninety pages of the printed text, and has the effect of omitting the account of Akbar's birth, with the prognostics and horoscopes appertaining thereto, as well as the notices of his ancestors from Adam down to his grand­father (Bābar). The reader may judge of the extent to which abbre­viation has been carried, when I state that the Chalmers MS. consists of two thinnish volumes of foolscap, and that the Bibliotheca Indica edition of the Persian text occupies three large quartoes which aggregate 1,600 pages.

The task of translation has occupied me several years, and the work has not been very congenial, for Abūl Faẓl is not an author for whom one can feel much sympathy or admiration. He was a great flatterer and unhesitatingly suppressed or distorted facts. His style, too, seems—at least to Western eyes—to be quite detestable, being full of circumlocutions, and both turgid and obscure. He is often prolix, and often unduly concise and darkly allusive. His one merit—and it is one which he specially claims for himself—is his laboriousness. He was an unwearied worker, and when we blame him and lament his deficiencies we shall do well to consider what a blank our knowledge of Akbar's reign would have been, had not Abūl Faẓl exerted himself during years of strenuous effort to chronicle events and institutions. His work also has the imperishable merit of being a record by a contemporary, and by one who had access to information at first hand.

I regret that the work of translation has not devolved upon a better Persian scholar than I am. I have endeavoured to do my best, and I have sought assistance in many quarters. I now desire to express my gratitude to my friends, Maulvi Abdul Haq Abid, the late Mr. J. Beames, Mr. A. G. Ellis of the British Museum, Mr. Irvine and Mr. Whinfield, and to the translation of the Āīn-i-Akbarī, by Professor Blochmann and Colonel Jarrett, and the works of Major Price. I am also indebted for much literary assistance to my elder brother, Mr. David Beveridge. There are, I am sure, many mistakes in my trans­lation and notes, but there would have been many more but for the assistance of my friends. I regret that I have been obliged to make two long lists of Errata and Addenda. In part this has been due to the translations being made in England and printed in India, and in part to increase of knowledge. The translation of the second volume, which carries on the history of Akbar's reign to the middle of the seventeenth year, has been completed by me, and I am about to begin the transla­tion of the third and last volume. The translation has been made from the Bibliotheca Indica edition of the text, but I have consulted many MSS. in the British Museum, the India Office, and the Royal Asiatic Society's Library, &c. The Bibliotheca Indica edition is by no means so good as it might have been, for the learned native editors* were desti­tute of geographical or historical knowledge. Hence they have often made mistakes in the names of persons and places. They have also no explanatory notes. In their preface they are severe upon the Lucknow edition. No doubt that edition has many faults, but it was the first in the field, and it is on the whole a creditable monument of the enter­prise of the publisher, Munshi Newal Kishor, and of the liberality of the Maharajah of Patiala. The editor, Maulvī Ṣādiq 'Alī, also deserves honourable mention. He has added numerous notes, and though many of these are trivial, yet there are also many which are really enlightening.

Since completing the translation, I have seen a remarkable MS. of the first volume of the Akbarnāma in the possession of Saiyid 'Alī Bilgrāmī. This is evidently a rough draft and contains severa things which do not occur in the MSS. of the finished work. Among them are one or two letters of Humāyūn. I have given an account of this MS. in R.A.S.J. for January 1903, p. 115.