Storia do Mogor 2: I. OPENING REMARKS.

2

THROUGH the generosity of the Government of India the elaborate 'Storia do Mogor,' sent to Europe by Niccolao Manucci more than two hundred years ago, now first reaches the public as he wrote it (allowing for the change from Portuguese and French and Italian into English). It can hardly be said to have earned him the renown for which he laboured so long and so diligently. In his lifetime it was captured and practically suppressed by a Jesuit editor, and the work, as presented to the public by that editor, has ever since borne the brunt of much adverse criticism. Even the true spelling of the author's name has never yet been settled. Beginning with his own form of Manuci, it passed into Manouchi, until, after many variations, it appears as the Manuech of the Madras 'Records' and the 'my old acquaintance Senor Monnock' of worthy Jeremiah Peachey, dismissed 'Chief of Mauldah.' An attempt is now made to show the man and his book in their true light, so that in future the shortcomings attributed to the one and the other may be at least their own and not those of somebody else. The inclusion of the work in the present series is due to the initiative of Mr. A. N. Wollaston, C.I.E., of the India Office, following on the paper read by me before the Royal Asiatic Society in June, 1903, and the note subsequently drawn up, which appeared in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society for October, 1903, pp. 723-733.