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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011
I am indebted to Saiyid ‘Alī Bilgrāmī Shamsu'l-Ulama for a perusal of this MS. It was purchased by him in Haidarabad.
The MS. is truly remarkable, for it is a brouillon, or roughdraught, of the first volume of the Akbarnāma. It originally wanted many passages which occur in the Bib. Ind. and Lucknow editions, but most, if not all of them, have been supplied by two or more collators. They seem to have gone carefully through the MS. and compared it with some MS. of the finished work, and they have made numerous additions and omissions so as to bring it into accord with the latter. Where the additions are of some length they are inserted in the margin, and when they consist of only a word or two they are interlined. Some of the additions are verse, and this may remind us of Abul Faẓl's statement in the 'Aīn (Jarrett, iii, p. 415) that he inserted verses on the fifth revision. Perhaps only in two instances, viz., at p. 242, corresponding to p. 246 Bib. Ind. ed., which is the chapter describing Akbar's circumcision, and at p. 346 = Bib. Ind. 349, has a verse originally omitted been inserted in the body of the text, in a blank space left for the purpose. All the other missing verses are, I think, inserted in the margin.
page 119 note 1 p. 205, seven lines from foot, Sāhib-i-dev u parī, rhyming with the previous clause, Bādshāh-i-mulk u al ijnab ‘adl-gustarī.
page 122 note 1 In the account of the second half of the seventeenth year, B.M. MS. Add. 27,247 differs considerably from all the other MSS. that I have seen, as well as from the Bib. Ind. ed. It looks like a brouillon of the second volume. It gives a fuller account of the incident of the Portuguese ambassadors visiting Akbar at Surat than that given in the Bib. Ind. ed., which is translated in Elliot, vi, 42, and gives an abstract of their address, and also describes them as obtaining leave to inspect the fort after it was taken. It also, on p. 244b, tells a story about Akbar, when travelling by cart from Surat to Aḥmadābād, indulging in a singing and drinking party with Bāz Bahādur and others, and his assaulting and nearly killing Shāhbaz Khān because he refused to sing.