Life and Conditions of the People of Hindustan (1200–1550 A.D.) c4.s2.t1.5

c4.s2.t1.5

In this connection I shall briefly refer to some useful features of certain chronicles which are helpful for a better survey of social life. The *Taj-ul Ma'a'sir* of Hasan Nizami, in spite of its containing so much that is 'rhapsodical and trapological,' is not altogether useless besides its 'powers of fancy and invention'. For instance, it describes, in numerous places, festivals and amusements, and throws valuable side-lights on the spirit of civil administration. Additional, though meagre, information is contained in the British Museum MSS. of *Tabaqat-i-Nasiri* and *Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi* of Barani which is not available in the *Bibliotheca Indica* texts or in Major Raverty's translation of the *Tabaqat*. I may mention, in this connection, that the evidence of the *Masalik-ul-Absar-fi-mamalik-ul-Amsar* of Shihab-ud-din Abu'l 'Abbas Ahmad bin Yahya, though indirect, is not to be under-rated on that account. The author was a contemporary of Muhammad Tughlaq (1297-1348 A.D.), and although he did not visit India personally, he had excellent means of knowing about Hindustan from the frequent intercourse between India and Egypt at that time. His work stood high in Oriental estimation and was often quoted by later historians of no mean talents, for instance the author of *Nuzhat-ul-qulub*.¹ His method of collecting facts, though novel, is critical and strictly scientific.² Among the memoirs, the claims of Malfuzat-i-Timur to authenticity have been disputed on various grounds—the want of the original MS. and the whole circumstances surrounding its discovery at a later date, etc. After an examination of the whole case Professor Dowson was satisfied that the Malfuzat bore the impress of originality and authenticity, and that the whole tenor of the work seemed to point to Timur himself as the man by whom, or under whose immediate direction and superintendence, the book was written.¹ There are few references to Indian social life in the Malfuzat but they are all borne out by the Zafar-nama of ‘Ali Yazdi and the work of Nizam Shami. For the memoirs of Babur, I have mainly adhered to the Persian version of ‘Abdur Rahim Khan-i-Khanan of the Court of Akbar, who presented his translation of the Waqi‘at-i-Baburi to the emperor in 1590. The translator was a versatile scholar in Turkish as well as in Persian and Hindi, and had exceptional opportunities of finding out the correct meaning of the royal author and of observing the social developments in Hindustan. On a comparison with the Turkish version (in the English rendering of A. S. Beveridge) I have noticed that the Persian version (British Museum MS.) gives a few additional facts regarding India. For Gulbadan’s Humayun-nama, I have adhered to A.S. Beveridge’s excellent edition of the text.