THAT the man who has not the honor to be born an Englishman, and is far from being a Persian; who never has seen England, and never had any other master in either language but himself, should attempt to translate from the Persian into English, and moreover to appear in print, is such a strange proceeding, and borders so much upon impudence and temerity, that the least I owe to an indulgent public, and to my own character, is to submit to their pleasure some account of so unusual a transaction, that they may see themselves by what a chain of strange circumstances I have been insensibly drawn into so adventurous an undertaking. And here I am conscious that I am going to fall, (through contagion probably) into a course of irksome egotisms; but as my story is likely to give many an insight into the customs and characters of Hindostan; and I have no other way of accounting for the temerity of my translation, I humbly conceive that, on that sole account, it may find grace with many of my readers, if ever I shall have any.
About eighteen years ago, when I was master of an Eastern Library, and of a Cabinet of Eastern Curiosities,* I had conceived a design of spending my leisure hours in a variety of translations, and likewise in a reasoned catalogue of my Library, Oriental Miniatures, and Antiquities. But all that, with the remainder of my fortune, was sacked and plundered at Djeddâh and Mecca in 1770; and I returned to India, with an intention indeed to begin the world anew under the patronage of my friends (the English), but with a firm resolution never to employ any money in books: I had even taken a dislike to them, I mean to Oriental books; when an event happened that reconciled me to them again. Such a narrative, I acknowledge, would figure pretty well at the end of the one thousand and one nights, but it is nevertheless true, and to my sorrow, but too true.
I had seen so much bad weather in my youthful days, and so often suffered both hunger and thirst in India, that whilst I was scraping together the little fortune which I since lost at Mecca, I thought it prudent to abstain from many a comfort of life, in order to lay-by the sooner a provision for a day of distress. But when I returned to India, and saw myself introduced by the national munificence, and private partiality of my English friends into a little competency, I thought it prudent, to snatch as fast as I could at those gratifications of which I had deprived myself hitherto, and at those pleasures which were now leaving me one after another. In time, I came to think it more prudent and more delicate to employ my industry and time in assembling a Seraglio of my own: this gratification, so luscious and fascinating in theory, but so irksome and cloying, as well as dangerous in practice, and which together with an Indian cabinet of curiosities, had always been a wish of my heart, was soon acquired; and whilst many of the English, who fancy I never travel without some mighty scheme in my head, thought I was actually upon the wing for some political project; I diverted myself with the ludicrous purpose for which I was really taking so many trips to Lucknow. But men on the decline of life, who after abandoning the scheme of making a collection of books, jump at once into the project of making a collection of Female Beauties, must lay their account with cutting now and then a capital figure in certain adventures, which never fail to spring up in a house where youth and beauty are jumbled together with old age and wrinkles. I discovered that a beloved girl of mine was in intrigue with one of my dependants; and the consequence of that amour soon proved of a nature which self-love could not put up with, but which a sense of humanity and a high regard for the girl, would not permit me either to chastise or to suppress. At last ?? resolved on turning the girl out of my house with a sum of money in her hands: but upon recollection, I remembered that a dear bought experience had taught me, that money and liberty together, were the very worst presents that could be made to young women who have always lived immured within lofty walls; and fain was I to provide for her in another manner. A Mushatta, that is a Procuress, was sent for, I mean one of those discreet, shrewd, inquisitive, old women, so common in Hindostan, where the business of finding a wife or a husband, is necessarily transacted by brockerage: after rummaging the whole city of Lucknow for three months together, and rejecting a number of parties, a young man of about thirty, stout, and of a good mien, was found out at last. It was a Mogul-Baccha, or man of Mogul origin, and a trooper; and of course, according to the notions universally received all over Hindostan, a gentleman to all intents and purposes. Contrary to the rules of the country, an interview was managed between the young folks; and by dint of reasoning and entreaties, I prevailed upon the girl to accept him. She was repeatedly heard to say that she felt no inclination for his company, but I objected that I could not with any regard to myself keep her at home, nor with any regard to her own welfare, entrust her person to herself. “You want then” said the girl, with an air which struck me, “You want then to turn me out of the house, and to chain me to that man”?—“Be it so,” added the girl,—after a pause— “But you shall one day repent of it.” Witnesses were now procured, a contract was passed, and she was married. The girl received with her own clothes and trinkets, some small presents, and a purse of three hundred rupees; and she was carried away by her husband. But what is singular she was bathed in tears, and all the women of the house were weeping likewise; and although such a circumstance is always part of the etiquette on such occasions, there was now an air of sincerity which greatly affected me.
A month had not elapsed, when she found means to send me complaints, and to wish herself dead: this was her expression; and there were many others. In two months more, the girl in a dark rainy night presented herself at my door; and I was astonished to find her in my house again. I informed her that I had divested myself by a public writing of every right over her person; that she was another man’s wife; and that my interfering in their quarrels, would neither do her good, nor redound to my honour. She fell a weeping, and complained that her husband, an antiphysician professed (as are most Moguls), passed his time in a company of non-conformists, and had besides gamed away her little dowry; so that she sometimes suffered for want of necessaries, the government being in arrears to him by full nine months. The unfortunate girl’s case was truly affecting; and her tears—and her protestations, that she would jump into a well (and she attempted it) rather than return to him, would have melted a statue of stone, and puzzled a man of sense. At last, after three days’ deliberation, I hit upon a party, which I prevailed upon her to admit; for her inexperience was such, that she thought she could live securely in my house: I hired a garry or a covered coach in a distant part of the town, and sometime before day-break I had her conveyed thither in a hamper, after having, as I thought, attended to her necessities, by putting in her hands a draught of two hundred rupees upon Benares; and provided for her safety by recommending her to an old man who had orders to see her landed in that city. I likewise contrived to get her escorted as far as one day’s journey from Lucknow. We parted with tears on both sides; and she was seen safe at twelve cosses distance. Seven days after, as I was getting out of my house at day-break to take an airing, I perceived a bag close to my door; and on my ordering one of my people to see what it could be, I went to look at it myself, and the first object that caught my sight, was an arm with a mole and an elegant hand, on a small finger of which I soon recollected a ring made of hair and gold wire. There was no standing such a spectacle. I returned into the house, and my troubled imagination made me see in the hall, right before me, the girl in tears, and saying: “be it so—but you shall repent.”
Few weeks had elapsed after this event, when I received intelligence that Governor Hastings was going to depart for Europe: this circumstance, to which he seemed to have been preparing our hearts,* completed the unhinging of my mind, as if by some unexpected stroke. That Gentleman had been one of my oldest acquaintances among the English: I had conceived an affection for his person so early as twenty-five years ago; and he had proved in the sequel, the principal author of my well-being: his quitting India at a time when I was yearly losing some of my friends by their departure for Europe, or by death; and when my mind, affected by these discouraging losses, and impressed with the thoughts of that ill-fated girl, wanted some potent relief, became a calamity that overwhelmed all my faculties. Some people observed that I was talking to his picture, a picture of striking likeness, by the inimitable Zophanii. I was sensible myself that some strange alteration had taken place within me, and I was thinking how to make a diversion to so much accumulated sorrow, when my good fortune interposed.
On my going into one of the Navvab’s seats, an old woman, among other articles of sale, offered me some broken leaves of a decayed book, in which the author talked with encomiums of the English Parliament in Europe, and with some asperity of the English Government in Bengal. A Persian discourse upon English Politics! strange indeed! I took the broken leaves, and perused some of them in the Garden; and the style, as well as the matter, having awakened my curiosity, I seized on this opportunity to afford some relief to my wearied mind. I resolved to translate it, in order to shew the author’s opinions to a couple of friends; but on translating, I found that I had in hand only some broken leaves of a second volume, and that the first and third were wanting; and these I found at Moorshoodabad, on my soon returning to Bengal. My views by this time had been greatly enlarged by the perusal of my author; and after having lightly thought of translating some parts of his book, merely as an object of curiosity, but especially as a resource against grief and deep felt sorrow, I resolved to translate the whole of it, as a matter of honor and benefit, being then intent on sending two of my children to England, and anxious to add something to an independent fund which I wished to establish for their education. Shall I end the phrase? I translate it now as a matter of information, which it is incumbent upon me to impart to my adopted Countrymen (the English); and as a warning which I owe to their prosperity. Having lived or strolled full five and-twenty years among them; being so far accustomed to their language, that I cannot, for want of practice, write any other so fluently; having been this long series of years an admirer of their language and history; and being indebted to their national munificence, as well as to their private partiality, for the little competency upon which I now subsist; the transition is but natural, (and this is but a very small merit, if any at all) from such a set of sentiments to such another, as would render me a well-wisher to their government and a friend to their prosperity: my own welfare has flowed from theirs, and even now does flow from it.