Page:The Tarikh-i-Rashidi - Mirza Muhammad Haidar, Dughlát - tr. Edward D. Ross (1895).djvu/12

Rh wrote in Persian), though not particularly rare in Europe, they are seldom to be obtained, as far as my experience goes, in any Asiatic country. In England, there are three copies at the British Museum, one in the possession of Professor Cowell, at Cambridge, and it would appear that three or four more, at least, are in the hands of private persons. But these are not all of equal value: one, at any rate, of those in the British Museum being a modern Indian copy, marred by many corruptions, while another is not quite complete. The British and Foreign Bible Society own two partial translations into Turki, which they were good enough to place at the disposal of the British Museum, to be used for purposes of collation in preparing the present English version. Neither of these, however, is complete; one of them consists of the Second Part only, and the other of merely a portion of that Part. In the public libraries on the Continent, I am informed that examples are often to be met with, but whether in the original or in Turki, I am not aware.

It appears, in any case, that European collectors have, in a great measure, exhausted the supply that might be thought to be available in one part of Asia or another. In India, I believe that copies exist in some of the libraries of Calcutta and perhaps elsewhere, but a search among the native booksellers, which was made for me in 1891, resulted in finding nothing. In Persia and Afghan Turkistan I have never been able to hear of the Tarikh-i-Rashidi, while in the country to which it chiefly refers, and where it would be most likely to be in request, there is reason to think that scarcely any examples are now left; at any rate, all the inquiries that I was able to make from 1880 to 1885, at Yarkand and Kashgar, produced only the Turki fragment alluded to above, as consisting of a portion of the Second Part of the book. In Kashmir, no copy was ever procurable by native inquirers, who endeavoured, at different times, to obtain one for me; yet it seems probable that the more perfect Turki copy in the Bible Society's library, may have been acquired, some twenty or twenty-five years ago, by a civil officer in Kashmir.

For the present translation, Mr. Ross made use, chiefly, of the Persian text numbered Add. 24,090, of the British Museum Catalogue, and with this he collated the one marked Or. 157, that of Professor Cowell (who very kindly lent it for the purpose) and, in the Second Part, the more perfect of the two