History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v3.c35.3

v3.c35.3

But the additional information supplied by these sources to the present volume has been disappointingly small. The Assamese *Buranji* is much less full and authentic than the Ahom chronicles previously used by me. The letters of Hamid-ud-din tell us only of petty raids and minor alarms. The *Raj-vilas* has been already abstracted by Tod, and it is after all a Court-poet's exaggerated eulogy and not a sober history. The mass of *Akhbarat* discovered at Jaipur unfortunately commences just where this volume ends and throws no light on the war in Rajputana before Aurangzib's departure for the Deccan. The current Rajput account summarized by Rao Gopal Singh cannot be always reconciled with the contemporary Persian sources; the local bards' poems are marked by rhetoric and hyperbole, their sources are unknown, and their authors mostly belonged to times later than the events described and wrote in a credulous eulogistic vein, giving a loose rein to their imagination or feeding local and family pride. In short, they embody uncritical popular tradition and not authentic facts. In the broad outlines and the general result, however, they, agree with the narrative I have constructed from the contemporary Persian records. The Vira-vinod alone is of value, but only with reference to Mewar affairs.