In presenting the concluding Volume of the Áín-i-Akbari to the public, I may permit the prefatory remarks of its author to serve as its best introduction. The range and diversity of its subjects and the untiring industry which collected and marshalled, through the medium of an unfamiliar language, the many topics of information to their minutest details, treating of abstruse sciences, subtile philosophical problems, and the customs, social, political and religious of a different race and creed, will stand as an enduring monument of his learned and patient diligence. Com­paring his work with the modern development of statistical science and our present accurate and exhaustive methods of tabulating the resources and summarising the extent of knowledge, the changes in the prevailing religious beliefs, in the laws, and in the administration of a state, and all that marks the relative, material and moral progress or decadence of a nation at any definite period, though there is much to be desired, his comprehensive and admirable survey yet merits the highest praise. He had intended to compare the Hindu sys­tems of philosophy with those of Greece and Persia and to conclude the review with his own criticisms on the several merits of these schools, but he laboured under the disadvan­tage of unfamiliarity with Sanskrit and he had to take the statements of his Pandits tested through translations at second-hand. He found his Hindu informants, as he says, of a retrograde tendency, spinning like silk worms, a tissue round themselves, immeshed in their own opinions, conced­ing the attainment of truth to no other, while artfully insinuating their own views, till the difficulty of arriv­ing at any correct exposition of their systems left him in a bewilderment of despair. How in later times his Brah­man Pandit, succeeded in deluding Wilford, is related by that scholar when he announced the “distressful discovery” in his essay on the Sacred Isles of the West. Abul Fazl had the wit or good fortune to escape imposition and his description of the Nine Schools of Philosophy, has the merit of being, as far as it goes, scrupulously precise.

Sir W. Jones in his essay on the Musical modes of the Hindus, reproaches Muhammedan writers in general for the untrustworthiness of their renderings of a foreign author's meaning in their own versions. “My experi­ence,” he says, “justifies me in pronouncing that the Moghols have no idea of accurate translation, and give that name to a mixture of gloss and text with a flimsy para­phrase of them both: that they are wholly unable, yet always pretend, to write Sanskrit words in Arabic letters: that a man who knows Hindus only from Persian books, does not know the Hindus; and that an European who follows the muddy rivulets of Muselman writers on India, instead of drinking from the pure fountain of Hindu learn­ing, will be in perpetual danger of misleading himself and others. From the just severity of this censure, I except neither Abul Fazl nor his brother Faizí, nor Mohsan-i Fání, nor Mirzá Khán himself: and I speak of all four after an attentive perusal of their works.” This severe criticism was consequent on the perusal of a Persian book containing a minute account of Hindu literature in all or most of its branches, composed by ‘the very diligent and ingenious Mirzá Khán,’ who professed to have extracted his chap­ter on music with the assistance of Pandits from several Sanskrit treatises, among them the Sangítá Darpana of which a Persian translation existed. The experience of this eminent scholar was wide and profound and he never advanced an opinion without strong or at least plausible reasons in its support. It is natural to expect that historians of a dominant, proselytising and intolerant creed like that of Islám, who seldom spoke of the Hindus and their beliefs without consigning them to perdition, should be at little pains to understand the tenets they con­demned as idolatry, and regarding them from the point of view of their professors, to set them forth in the dry light of calm philosophical inquiry. But this is what Abul Fazl and Muḥsan i Fání—to mention only these two—explicitly profess to have done, and Sir William Jones' sweeping censure may be tempered by his opinion of the latter writer in another passage of his works where he calls him a learned and accurate author. It is doubtful whether the MSS. of the Áín at that time available, allowed him to read the chapters on Hindu philosophy so as to judge of the fidelity of its exposition. He mentions Abul Fazl's name, to the best of my recollection, but once again in connection with the chapter on music, which he describes as superficial. No work of Abul Fazl's, nor any on Hindu philosophy appears in the catalogue of Oriental MSS. in his possession. Nevertheless his assurance must suffice, and to so brilliant an intellect and so omnivorous a reader who had read twice through the whole Sháhnámah and once the entire mystical poem of Jalálu'ddín Rúmí in manuscript; who had perused and translated innumerable other works on almost all branches of Eastern and Western literature, not to mention the works of, and five commentaries on, Confucius in Chinese, the additional volumes of Abul Fazl would have been of little account. To the charge of a vicious transliteration of Sanskrit terms into Arabic, all these writers, including the greater name of Albírúní, are more justly amenable, and I have occasionally pointed out in the notes to the text, the almost unintelligible form of Abul Fazl's transcripts. This was in a large measure due to ignorance of Sanskrit and the absence of any precise system of the pho­netic representation of its letters. But when we observe even in modern times, the same fault among the Orientalists of the West and the vagaries of transliteration in Freytag, Weil, Hammer-Purgstall, De Guignes, D'Herbelot, Pococke, Ockley and a host of others, the reproach cannot be fairly pointed at Muhammedan writers alone. The difficulty was felt by Albírúní with a pathetic acknowledgment of the hopelessness of remedy. “Some of the consonants” he says (I employ Sachau's translation with some freedom), “of which the language is composed are neither identical with those of Arabic and Persian nor resemble them in any way. Our tongue and uvula can scarcely manage to pro­nounce them correctly, nor our ears distinguish them from similar sounds, nor can we transliterate them accurately. It is very difficult, therefore, to express an Indian word in our writing, for in order to fix the pronunciation we must change our orthographical points and signs, and must pronounce the case-endings either according to the common Arabic rules or according to special rules adapted for the purpose. Add to this, that the Indian scribes are careless and do not take pains to produce correct and well collated copies. In consequence, the highest results of the author's mental development are lost by their negligence, and his book becomes in the first or second copy so full of faults that the text appears as something entirely new. It will sufficiently illustrate the matter if we tell the reader, that we have sometimes written down a word from the mouth of Hindus, taking the greatest pains to fix its pro­nunciation, and that afterwards when we repeated it to them, they had great difficulty in recognising it.”

I have indicated at the beginning of the 2nd Volume (p. 2), the striking resemblance of a passage in the text to the opening of the third chapter of Albírúní's Chronology and suggested a plagiarism. After a careful study of both these authors, I am the more convinced that Abul Fazl borrowed the idea and arrangement of his work from his great prede­cessor. I have shown in his account of the Sarkár of Kábul instances of direct plagiarism from the Memoirs of Baber, and in his lives of Moslem Saints in the third Volume, verbatim extracts without acknowledgment from the Ṣúfic hagiography of Jámí. The same volume displays other examples, suggestive rather than definite, of his indebtedness to an author whom he never names. The difference between the two men in this particular is most remarkable. Albírúní's reading was far more extensive and scholarly. The Sanskrit sources of his chapters are almost always given, and Sachau's preface has a list of the many authors quoted by him on astronomy, chronology, geography, and astrology. He was also acquainted with Greek literature through Arabic translations, and in comparing its language and thought and those of Hindu metaphysics, selects his quota­tions from the Timœus and its commentator the Neo-Platonist Proclus, with judgment and rare ability. His list of Greek authors, among others, includes Aristotle, Johannes Grammaticus, Porphyry, Apollonius, Aratus, Galenus, and Ptolemy. Zoroastrian, Christian, Jewish, Manichean and Ṣúfí sources are indicated by him, and he rarely fails to record his authorities. With Abul Fazl it is the reverse. He rarely names them, and borrows from every side without scruple as without avowal. The difference in the manner of the two authors is not less conspicuous. Albírúní quotes freely from his authorities and where these seem to exaggerate or to be inaccurate, his citations are followed by some sharp brief commentary which gives a ceaseless interest to his pages. Especially is this the case where their assertions can be brought to the searching test of mathematics to which he subjected the data of Indian astronomers in his examination of their system. In this latter science, according to his own account, he stood pre­eminent, and on his visit to India he had to learn, as a pupil, their national and traditional methods, but after he had made some progress, he began to act the teacher and to show them the scientific methods of mathematics in general, and they flocked from all parts to hear him, wondering from what Hindu Master he had learnt these things, and giving him the epithet of “The Sea.” His treatment of these topics is throughout scholarly, showing extensive reading and precision of thought acquired by a study of the exact sciences. Abul Fazl, on the contrary, transcribes either from existing works or from oral communication. His compilation is extremely careful and carried out with the most laborious and marvellous exactitude, but it is unenlivened by those masterly criticisms which give Albírúní his unique position among Eastern writers. It is certain that Albírúní's India was made use of largely by several authors, among them al-Gardezí who re-pro­duced his account of the ´Saka era, and Rashídu'ddín, who transferred the whole of Chapter xviii into his chronicle. (Cf. Sachau. Pref. xliii). I have no hesitation in adding to these two the name of Abul Fazl. The charge of plagia­rism against an Eastern writer is too common to be offen­sive. Nearly all are obnoxious to a reproach of which apparently they are unconscious, as none prefers it against another. The prevalence of the custom may condone its laxity among ordinary writers, but the great reputation, the bold and independent mind of Abul Fazl commands and deserves a nobler estimation, and the practice is unworthy of his fame. It is remarkable that he had intended, as he says, to arrange the Hindu systems of philosophy in due order and to weigh them with those of the Grecian and Persian schools. Albírúní in his preface expresses the same inten­tion, which he practically carried out, mentioning similar theories among the Greeks as well as the ideas of the Ṣúfís and of some one or other Christian sect, in order to show the relationship existing between them, and that in the pantheistic doctrine of the unity of God there is much in common between these systems. The coincidence strength­ens the strong probability of Abul Fazl's use of Albírúní's work, but he wisely refrained from undertaking a task which, I suspect, was beyond him and would have indicated too plainly the source of his erudition.

When all is said, however, which a strict impartiality must weigh in counterpoise to his sterling merits, there remains ample justification for the high place held by this great work in the West as well as the East, and as a record of the extension of the Moghul empire of India under the greatest of its monarchs and the ability with which it was administered, it must always remain of permanent and fascinating interest. It crystallizes and records in brief, for all time, the state of Hindu learning, and besides its statistical utility, serves as an admirable treatise of reference on numerous branches of Brahmanical science and on the manners, beliefs, traditions, and indigenous lore, which for the most part still retain and will long continue their hold on the popular mind. Above all, as a register of the fiscal areas, the revenue settlements and changes introduced at various periods, the harvest returns, valuations and imposts throughout the provinces of the empire, its originality is as indisputable as its surpass­ing historical importance. The concluding account of the author and his family and the persecutions to which they were subjected will, perhaps, be read with as much interest as any other portion of the work. The wanderings from house to house and refuge to refuge, of his father, his brother Faizi and himself, are told with an unconscious humour which its figurative and florid style render irresistibly droll in the original, and no finer or more biting comment on the worth and constancy of Eastern friendships was ever penned than may be found running like figured threads through the woven picture of this inimitable narrative. The notes to the text form a sufficient comment on the subjects with which it deals, and dispense with a further notice of them in this place. As to the manner in which the original has been rendered into English, I have studied to fulfil the aim of the greatest among Roman orators in translating two of the most celebrated orations of the greatest among the Greeks; “in quibus non verbum pro verbo necesse habui reddere, sed genus omnium verborum vimque servavi.” The issue, whether in success or failure, rests with the judg­ment of my readers.

I cannot conclude without acknowledging my indebt­edness to Mr. Rizḳu'llah Azzún, Professor of Arabic to the Board of Examiners, for the care he has bestowed upon the Index to this Volume at a time when my duties gave me little leisure for so onerous a task. Its exhaustive fulness, and its accuracy, will be gratefully recognised by all who use it, and by none more than myself whose work so largely profits by its utility.

CALCUTTA,	H. S. JARRETT.
17th May, 1894.