The history of Firishta is universally known in India,—at least by name, and there are few large towns without a copy. If we add to these the works labelled “Nauras-náma” and “Táríkh-i Ibráhímí,” which few of the present ignorant generation know to be the same as Firishta's history, we shall find that it is probably more common than any secular work of equal size in this country. There are several manuscripts also of correctness and elegance, but all must yield the palm to the lithographed edition of 1831, which, like so many other Persian works printed at the Bombay Presidency, shames the lithographic press of this side of India.
We have no critical account of the Manuscripts used in collating this edition. To General Briggs, however, is due the merit of having prepared it for the press, though his absence prevented his superintending its execution. All we learn of it from him is, that he “procured a copy of Firishta in Persian, which contained several valuable annotations and corrections. This copy has since been carefully collated with several others, and a new and correct edition was left by me at Bombay in 1827 in order to be printed.”* He confesses himself indebted to Mír Khairát 'Alí Khán, commonly called Mushták, who assisted him in his labours, who had devoted his whole life to historical inquiries, and who travelled for several years successively through the Dakhin, making copies of every Persian inscription on stone to be found in all the towns of note in that country.
It is strange that, notwithstanding the care bestowed by General Briggs on this work, his name nowhere appears as having any concern in it. It is without preface, and without title-page, but there is a fly-leaf at the end of the second volume, informing us that the work was undertaken by order of Mr. Elphinstone, and executed by the care, and according to the arrangement, of Captain George Jervis; that the first volume was written by Mirzá Hasan of Shíráz, the second by Mirzá Hamzah of Mázenderán. M. Jules Mohl* exonerates Captain Jervis from the charge of taking credit to himself for the labours of others, inasmuch as that officer was at the Cape of Good Hope at the time that the last sheets were passing through the press, but attributes blame to the Persian lithographer, who no doubt wished to ingratiate himself with his immediate master by this insinuating flattery.
On the arrival of the impressions in London, the General took
care to add a fitting title-page, which states that the work was
“edited and collated from various Manuscript copies by Major-
There are other omissions which give us cause to regret that
this edition was not more carefully lithographed under European
superintendence. To be sure, the names of people and places
are written with unusual, though not entire, accuracy; the addition
of marginal dates is a great convenience, and the handwriting
of the lithographers is clear and elegant; but we have
no list of variants to enable us to judge of the propriety of the
selected reading; we have not a single stop, or super-lineation,
throughout the whole work; the rubrics, or large letters, are not
properly contrasted; the stones have been corrected before impression,
and not always with care; several dates in the text
had been omitted from the margin; and the dates of the page-
The Vocabulary of difficult and obsolete words, which was promised, has not been included in the work. It would be worth while to supply the omission even now, by making a separate impression of this Appendix; for though the style of Firishta is very pure and easy, he takes from other authors words which are not always to be found in our dictionaries, and which require explanation, only to be obtained by referring to the original passages where they occur.