Life and Conditions of the People of Hindustan (1200–1550 A.D.) c4.s2.t2.11

c4.s2.t2.11

² Compare E.D., III, 566. Curiously enough the only extract of the book made for Sir H.M. Elliot by ‘a munshi’ and incorporated by him in his work (Volume III, 566-7) is the one which least deserved to be incorporated. It purports to be a despatch from a State official designated as Badr Hajib and addressed to the Crown Prince, announcing a victory over the Mongols and the occupation of Ghazni by the royal armies. This relates, as the editor remarks, to ‘a matter upon which the historians are silent’. The original passage occurs in Vol. IV, pp. 144—156 (Lucknow text). Sir H.M. Elliot and his munshi both overlooked the fact that it was never meant to be treated as a genuine royal document but only a model for epistolography. On page 18 of Vol. IV, Amir Khusrau makes it plain that he has ‘coined’ the letter herein inserted and again repeats, on page 22 of the same volume, that he made ample use of his own fruitful imagination in writing fictitious letters and that of others who had done the same before him and thus had given shape to a book of charm and originality by skilfully editing these ‘single and compound words, short and long phrases and brief and lengthy documents purporting to be official’. The mention of this paricular fact—the occupation of Ghazni and the defeat of the Mongols as well as the style of the letter may have been borrowed from an earlier date when Sher Khan occupied Ghazni on behalf of Sultan Nasir-ud-din Mahmud, to which a reference has been made in an earlier footnote.