[14] This regulation is more fully expounded in Price, p. 7. [↑]
[15] It is curious that Jahāngīr should give the 18th Rabīʿu-l-awwal as his birthday, while the authorities give it as the 17th. Probably the mistake has arisen from Jahāngīr’s writing Rabīʿu-l-awwal instead of S͟hahrīwar. His birthday was Ras͟hn the 18th day of S͟hahrīwar (see Akbarnāma, ii, 344), but it was the 17th Rabīʿu-l-awwal. See Muḥammad Hādī’s preface, p. 2, and Beale, and Jahāngīr’s own statement a few lines above. Possibly Jahāngīr wished to make out that he was born on the 18th Rabīʿu-l-awwal and a Thursday, because he regarded Thursday as a blessed day (mubārak s͟hamba), whilst he regarded Wednesday as peculiarly unlucky, and called it kam, or gam, s͟hamba. [↑]
[16] Cf. Elliot’s translation, vi, 513, and note 2. [↑]
[17] The MSS. have “the subsistence lands of people in general (ahālī) and the aimas.” [↑]
[18] In the text and in Elliot, vi, 515, this is made a separate order, but it is not so in the MSS. If it were, we should have thirteen instead of twelve regulations. This is avoided in text and in Elliot by putting the 8th and 7th regulations into one ordinance. With regard to the regulation about releasing the prisoners, Sir Henry Elliot is somewhat unjust to Jahāngīr in his commentary at p. 515. It was only those who had been long imprisoned whom Jahāngīr released, and his proceedings at Ranthambhor in the 13th year (Tūzuk, p. 256) show that he exercised discrimination in releasing prisoners. The account in Price, p. 10, may also be consulted. There Jahāngīr says he released 7,000 men from Gwalior alone. It may be remembered that most of these were political offenders. Private criminals were for the most part put to death, or mutilated, or fined. There were no regular jails. [↑]
[19] The above translation of the Institutes should be compared with Sir Henry Elliot’s translation and his commentary: History of India, E. & D., vol. vi, Appendix, p. 493. [↑]
[20] Erskine’s MS. has īs̤ārī for nis̤ārī, and ak͟htar-i-qabūl instead of k͟hair-i-qabūl. [↑]
[21] This is Blochmann’s Āṣaf K͟hān No. iii, viz. Mīrzā Jaʿfar Beg. See pp. 368 and 411. [↑]
[22] The words Āftāb-i-Mamlakat yield, according to the numeration by abjad, the date 1014 A.H. (1605). [↑]
[23] Page 4 of the text is followed by engravings of the coins of Jahāngīr and the inscriptions thereon, for which the editor, Saiyid Aḥmad, says he is indebted to Mr. Thornhill, the Judge of Meerut. They do not show the lines of poetry. There is an interesting article on the couplets on Jahāngīr’s coins by Mr. C. J. Rodgers, J.A.S.B. for 1888, p. 18. [↑]