With reference to the portrait of Jahāngīr prefixed to this volume, it may be interesting to note that it appears from Mr. E. B. Havell’s “Indian Sculpture,” p. 203, that the British Museum possesses a drawing by Rembrandt which was copied from a Moghul miniature, and which has been pronounced by Mr. Rouffaer to be a portrait of Jahāngīr. Coryat (Purchas, reprint, iv, 473) thus describes Jahāngīr’s personal appearance:—“He is fifty and three years of age, his nativity-day having been celebrated with wonderful pomp since my arrival here. On that day he weighed himself in a pair of golden scales, which by great chance I saw the same day; a custom he observes most inviolably every year. He is of complexion neither white nor black, but of a middle betwixt them. I know not how to express it with a more expressive and significant epitheton than olive. An olive colour his face presenteth. He is of a seemly composition of body, of a stature little unequal (as I guess not without grounds of probability) to mine, but much more corpulent than myself.”
As regards the bibliography of the Tūzuk-i-Jahāngīrī, I have to note that there is an Urdu translation by Munshī Aḥmad ʿAlī Sīmāb of Rāmpūra, that is, Aligarh in Tonk. It was made from Muḥammad Hādī’s edition under the patronage of Muḥammad Ibrāhīm ʿAlī K͟hān Nawāb of Tonk, and was published by Newal Kishor in 1291 (1874). There is also a Hindi translation by Munshī Debī Prasād which was published in 1905 at Calcutta by the Bhārat Mitra Press. The Urdu translation referred to by Mr. Blumhardt in his Catalogue of Hindustani MSS., p. 61, and noticed by Elliot, vi, 401, and Garcin de Tassy, iii, 301, is, as the two latter writers have remarked, a translation of the Iqbāl-nāma. The MS. referred to by Elliot vi, 277, as having been in the possession of General Thomas Paterson Smith, and which is described in Ethé’s Catalogue of the India Office MSS., No. 2833, p. 1533, was made by Sayyid Muḥammad, the elder brother of Sayyid Aḥmad. At the end of the MS. the copyist gives some account of himself and of his family. He made the copy from copies in the Royal Library and in the possession of Rajah Roghū Nāth Singh alias Lāl Singh Jālpūr. He finished it in October, 1843. Sayyid Muḥammad was Munsif of Hutgām in the Fatḥpūr district. He died young in 1845. My friend Mr. T. W. Arnold, of the India Office, informs me that Sayyid Aḥmad told him that he found a valuable illustrated MS of the Tūzuk in the débris of the Delhi Royal Library, and took it home, but that it was lost when his house was plundered by the mutineers. There is in the Bodleian a copy in Sayyid Aḥmad’s own handwriting. He states that he made use of ten good MSS. The Englishman at whose request he made the copy was John Panton Gubbins, who was once Sessions Judge of Delhi. This copy is described in the Bodleian Catalogue, p. 117, No. 221. The MS. No. 220 described on the same page was brought home by Fraser, and is a good one, but only goes down to the end of the 14th year.
H. Beveridge.
March, 1909.
Postscript.—Since writing this Preface I have been enabled by the kindness of Mr. Irvine to examine the Hindi Jahāngīr-nāma of Debī Prasād. It is not a translation, but an abstract, and I do not think it is of much value. Being a Jodhpūr man he has been able, perhaps, to correct some spellings of places, but he does not seem to have consulted any MSS., and when he comes to a difficulty he shirks it. The most valuable adjunct to the Tūzuk, after the Iqbāl-nāma, is the Maʾās̤ir-i-Jahāngīrī of Kāmgār Ḥusainī. It is important as giving the early history of Jahāngīr, that is, of the time when he was Prince Selīm. There are three copies of his work in the British Museum, but the so-called Maāthir-i-Jahāngīrī of the India Office Library, No. 3098, or 324 of the new Catalogue, is only a copy of the Iqbāl-nāma.
I regret that the number of Errata and Addenda is so large, but when I began the revision I did not know that Sayyid Aḥmad’s text was so incorrect. It will be seen that at pp. 158 and 162 I have made two erroneous notes.
[1] It is owing to the crabbed writing of Price’s MS. that at p. 21 Jahāngīr is made to say that the Prince of Kashmir belonged to the society of Jogīs. The real statement is that the prince belonged to the Chak family. [↑]