After an interval of about five years, the second volume of Mr. Alexander Rogers’ translation of Jahangir’s Memoirs has been published by the Royal Asiatic Society. It is a smaller work than the first volume, for it only extends over six years of the reign, as against the twelve years of its predecessor. Even then it does not include the whole of the reign, for that lasted twenty-two years. The two volumes, however, contain all that Jahangir wrote or supervised. It will be found, I think, that the present volume is fully as interesting as its predecessor. The accounts of the Zodiacal coinage (pp. 6 and 7), and of the comet, or new star (p. 48), the notice of the Plague in Agra (pp. 65–67), and the elaborate description of Kashmir, under the chronicle of the 15th year, are valuable, and a word should be said for the pretty story of the King and the Gardener’s daughter (p. 50), and for the allusions to painters and pictures. If Babur, who was the founder of the Moghul Empire in India, was the CÆsar of the East, and if the many-sided Akbar was an epitome of all the great Emperors, including Augustus, Trajan, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius, Julian, and Justinian. Jahangir was certainly of the type of the Emperor Claudius, and so bore a close resemblance to our James I. All three were weak men, and under the influence of their favourites, and all three were literary, and at least two of them were fond of dabbling in theology. All three were in their wrong places as rulers. Had James I. (and VI. of Scotland) been, as he half wished, the Keeper of the Bodleian, and Jahangir been head of a Natural History Museum, they would have been better and happier men. Jahangir’s best I am indebted to Mr. Ellis, of the India Office, for revising the proofs. NOTE.In the Catalogue of Manuscripts in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin, p. 416, mention is made of a history of Hindustan during the reign of Jahangir, in two volumes, with paintings (Ouseley MSS.). I have recently ascertained that the MS. is only a modern copy of the Iqbal-nama. H. Beveridge. |