Storia do Mogor 8.1

8.1

Many writers have lamented the disappearance of the manuscript from which Catrou drew his 'Histoire,' beginning with Robert Orme in 1782, and ending with Mr. S. Lane-Poole in 1893. It was in this latter year I first heard that it had found its way to Berlin, and through the intervention of the late Dr. Rost, librarian, was then temporarily at the India Office in London, for the use of Mr. A. Constable, who at that time purposed an edition. During this long period of a century or more the manuscript had never really disappeared; a little search could have found it, and for sixty years or so it was even lying in England, had anybody cared to look for it. Orme himself had a pretty accurate knowledge of where it was when he was writing between 1763 and 1782. Nor was Catrou's text a mere short, mutilated abstract, as J. Bernouilli was led to surmise from the discrepancies between the 'Histoire' and the Venice Codex (see 'Recherches sur l'Inde,' Berlin, 1787, vol. ii., note b to p. 284). The mistake was, under the circumstances, very excusable. We know from Catrou's preface (p. 2) that M. Deslandes handed him the manuscript on which he founded his book; while Manucci in various places states that he made over the text of his 'Storia' to that gentleman for conveyance to Europe. Evidently his hope was that it would be published at the expense of Louis XIV. This M.