Page:India in the Fifteenth Century, being a Collection of Narratives of Voyages to India.djvu/85

Rh Rukh, at Herát, and held that office until his death, which happened in A.H. 887 (A.D. 1482).

The narrative of his voyage to India was introduced, not in a literal, but in a popular form, in the Collection portative de Voyages, published by Langlès, 1798-1820, six vols., 12mo. A very curious notice upon Langlès, by M. P. H. J. B. Audiffret, the keeper of the manuscripts in the Library at Paris, which was printed in the third volume of the Biographie universelle et portative des cotemporains (1854), is quoted by M. Quérard, in his Supercheries Litteraires, as proving that Langlès was not only undeserving of the literary reputation he enjoyed, but that he had been guilty of two literary frauds, one of which is connected with the document of which we now treat. It was for a long time believed by orientalists, says M. Audiffret, that the voyage from Persia into India by Abd-er-Razzák, a little work forming but the half of a small volume, was the only attempt made by M. Langlès in oriental literature. M. Audiffret says: "It is now proved beyond a doubt, that the voyage of Abd-er-Razzák was taken entirely from a French translation made by M. Galland (the celebrated translator of the Arabian Nights' Entertainments) from a history of Shah Rukh and the other descendants of Tímúr, written by the same Abd-er-Razzák, two copies of which are in the National Library at Paris. It is a painful task to have to show that the pretended translator has published M. Galland's work as his own, and in order to conceal his plagiarism, has stolen from one of the copies those paragraphs which re-