THE author of this voluminous work is Bahádur Singh, son of Hazárí Mal, a Bhatnágar Káyath of the Gondíwál sub-division, and a resident of Sháh-Jahánábád, who finished his work in the year 1249 A.H. (1833-4 A.D.).

He tells us very little about himself, and there is no part of the work that enables us to fill up the outline. He says merely that circumstances induced him to leave his native country, and that he was in great distress when he arrived at Lucknow in the year 1232 A.H. (1817 A.D.), in the time of Gházíu-d dín Haidar. It was there that he read several Hindí and Persian works, containing accounts of kings, nobles, ministers, divines and philo­sophers, and that he was induced to write a connected history of them, in order that the great men of the present day might benefit by their examples. This work he called after his own name, Yádgár-i Bahádurí, “The Memorial of Bahádur.”

This is all we learn from the Preface, which is usually full of personal details, but at page 2040 we are told the work was finished in the year above mentioned on the 1st of the “blessed month” Ramazán, after having occupied a long time in its com­pilation. The work, we are told, is a mere copy from others, and the author has not added a word, and that after reading several histories, some of which are laudatory and some inculpa­tory, and few without a leaning one way or the other, he has come to the conclusion that there are more lies than truths in history. One would have hoped for something philosophical after such a declaration, but he evidently adheres to his determination of giving nothing original; and it is only at the close of the work, when he gives an account of the Nawábs of Oudh, their families and ministers, that we are favoured with anything historical which we cannot obtain elsewhere.

There are, however, several features in the work, besides its historical ones, which render it of value. The History of the Hindú sects and devotees, the biographies of the Poets, the Chapters on the useful arts, and the Geography, are especially to be commended. The latter appears to be chiefly taken, without acknowledgment, from the Hadíkatu-l Akálím, (No. CVII., suprà, p. 180), but it contains some notices not to be found in that work.

The author entertained great rancour against the Kashmírians, and in his history of that country he speaks of their depravity as arising from their illegitimacy, and ends by saying that rich and poor should abhor this people, and even destroy them when possible, and that “he who is their friend cannot be quite free from contamination in his own descent.” It is probable that he may have been thwarted in obtaining some employment by the superior adroitness and intrigue of one of this race, and takes this oppor­tunity of venting his spleen upon the whole nation. It must be confessed, however, that they bear a bad character in Hindústán, and certain popular verses show the low estimation in which they are held. The constant oppression they have undergone for the last thousand years, and which they are still subject to, is enough to degrade the morale of any nation, with whatever excellences it may have been originally endowed by its Maker.