[THIS compilation commences with the reign of Farrukh Siyar, and ends with the fourth year of the reign of Muhammad Sháh, but it was not finished before the year 1217 A.H. (1802 A.D.). The author was Sheo Dás, of Lucknow. He was moved to write the work by the consideration that “he had been allowed to remain a long time in the society of learned, scientific, and highly talented men—and had spent his life in the service of the great. He had moreover applied himself to acquiring the art of writing with elegance, and so he determined to show the results of his society in his composition. He named his work Sháh-náma or Munawwaru-l Kalám, because he had been on terms of intimacy with the great, and derived advantages from them.” He follows the fashion of historians, and, although a Hindú, opens his work like a devout Musulmán.

The whole of this work has been translated for Sir H. M. Elliot by “Lieut. Prichard, 15th Regt. N. I.” The work con­tains a good deal of biography and anecdote, but the period it covers has been already provided for by Extracts from contem­porary writers.]