THIS is a well-known general history of India. It was com­posed by Munshí Subhán Ráí Khattrí, an inhabitant of Pattiála. Many copies fail to give the name of the author,* and the Ma-ásiru-l Umará quotes the work merely as being written by a Hindú, without giving his name, in a passage which has been wrongly translated, as being “written in Hindúí language.”*

It was written in 1107 A.H. (1695-6 A.D.), and occupied, we are told by the author, two years in its composition. This, how­ever, may be doubted, for the work is chiefly a copy from the Mukhtasiru-t Tawáríkh, noticed above; although there is no acknowledgment of the extent to which the author is indebted to that anonymous work. Notwithstanding which, he has the impudence to tell us in his Preface, that he has stolen nothing from any one, but composed the work himself—a declaration which, as he was under no necessity to make it, of itself excites suspicions of his honesty.

The author indulges in the same moral reflections, and assigns the same reasons for writing this history, as had already been given by the author of the Mukhtasiru-t Tawáríkh, and have been quoted in that article.

The opening chapters, which are the best portion of the work, give a good account of the products of Hindústán, and its Geography, as known in the time of Aurangzeb. He confines the history of the Ghaznivides to the transactions in India alone, and in consequence absurdly reduces the number of their reigns to seven. In the reigns of the early Kings of Dehlí he does not enter into much more detail; yet, notwithstanding the brief­ness of the narrative, he occasionally indulges in poetical quota­tions and needless digressions; as where he describes the seasons of spring, summer, autumn, and winter in the Ghaznivide history; and gives us an account of the various games in the reign of Kai-Kubád; of fireworks, and of a famine, in the reign of Jalálu-d dín; and of wine and its effects, in the reigns of Shahábu-d dín and 'Aláu-d dín.

His accounts of the reigns of the first four Mughal Emperors are copious, considering the nature of the work; but he has said very little of Sháh Jahán, excusing himself on the ground of Wáris Khán's having already written a copious history of that Emperor's reign. His account of the contests between Aurangzeb and his brothers is very full, and he closes with the period when that Empéror has succeeded in getting rid of his rivals, and has no longer a competitor for the throne. Beyond this period he enters into no particulars, though he wrote in the fortieth year of the reign.

He gives no separate history of the independent monarchies of India, such as of the Dakhin, Bengal, Gujarát, etc., but merely gives a brief account of each king's reign, when he comes to mention the final absorption of each province in the Mughal Empire. Thus, the Kings of Multán are treated of in the reign of Bábar, the Kings of Málwá, Gujarát, Bengal, Kashmír, Sind, and the Dakhin in the reign of Akbar. The accounts of the Kings of Multán and Kashmír are given at greater length than the others.

The work is better known to the public by the Urdú transla­tion, called the Áráish-i Mahfil, of Mír Sher 'Alí Ja'farí, with the poetical designation of Afsos, son of Saiyid 'Alí Muzaffar Khán, and one of Dr. Gilchrist's chief coadjutors in the editing and correcting of his useful Hindústání publications, such as the Bágh-i Urdú, a translation of the Gulistán, Kuliyát-i Saudá, and Nasr-i Be-nazír. The beginning of this translation was printed in Calcutta in a folio volume in 1808. Sher 'Alí Afsos repre­sents that he has not made a literal translation, but added or rejected as he thought proper. He has made the greatest altera­tions in the accounts of the súbas and sarkárs, and the least in the accounts of forts, and none at all in the revenues of the pro­vinces, as he has no means of bringing down the information to his own time. [He has kept, he says, many passages relating to the miracles and marvels of Súfís merely for conformity with the original work; and for the same reason he has retained many marvellous statements about Hindú devotees and temples, although they are contrary to reason, and he is not the man to believe them.] The beginning of this translation had already been made, when, at the instigation of Mr. Harington, he was induced to continue the work from the time of the Muhammadan Emperors. The latter portion has never been printed, but is stated by M. Garcin de Tassy to exist in manuscript in the Library of the Asiatic Society of Calcutta.*

There is little to indicate that this work was written by a Hindú, except that the date of composition is recorded, not only in the Hijra and Julús years, but in the era of the Kali-yug, Bikramájít, and Sáliváhana.*

The Khulásatu-t Tawáríkh professes to be founded on the best authorities, no less than twenty-seven being quoted by name, of which those which are the rarest are the History of Mahmúd Subuktigín by Mauláná 'Unsurí, History of Sultán Shahábu-d dín Ghorí, History of Sultán 'Aláu-d dín Khiljí, Táríkh-i Fíroz-sháhí by 'Izzu-d dín Khálidkhání,* the History of the Afgháns by Husain Khán, the History of Akbar by 'Atá Beg Kazwíní, and the Táríkh-i Bahádur-sháhí, containing the history of Gujarát. Whether these works were really read and examined may be questioned, for there is nothing in this history which would seem to be derived from these unusual sources of information.

Many verses, some said to be original, and some extracted from various authors, are inserted in different passages of the narrative, to which they were considered appropriate.

[Colonel Lees, in his article upon Indian Historians in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (N.S. vol. iii.), has bestowed very great praise upon the author of the Khulásatu-t Tawáríkh. He says, “It is one of the most carefully compiled general histories of India I know of. The author commences with the Pándus, and brings his narrative down to the end of the year 1107 A.H. It was continued for some years later by another hand; and here I may mention, as an instance of how desirable it is to print the texts of all the valuable histories of India compiled in former times we can, that the author of the well-known Siyaru-l Muta-akhkhirín, who wrote his history when Lord Hastings was Governor-General, has transferred almost the whole of this work to his pages verbatim, without ever once mentioning the author's name. A more glaring instance of plagiarism it would be impossible to conceive; yet the author of the Siyar has a great reputation, especially among European writers, and the name of the modest Subhán Ráí, the real his­torian, is probably wholly unknown. To make matters worse, this dishonest copyist says, in the preface of his book, that he found a few pages of an old book, prepared by some munshí for one of the Muhammadan Emperors, which he made use of, but it was full of mistakes, which he corrected. This is nothing else but a barefaced falsehood; for if there are mistakes in Subhán Ráí's history, he has copied them all, and made very many of his own besides. Another dishonest writer translated the same his­tory into Hindústání, and giving it a new name, the Áráish-i Mahfil, passed it off as an original composition. He was, how­ever, more honest than the other, as, though he denies that his book is a translation, he acknowledges some obligation.”