A RIVAL OF BERNIER.*
WIIEN the Roi Soleil was gathering into his own hands the threads of government, and was becoming the social, adminis- trative, and military head of an Imperial France, thereby preparing the way for a national consciousness which resulted in the Revolution, be had in India a rival as splendid and as autocratic as himself, and Delhi was at.least the equal of Versailles in opulence and luxury. Small wonder that many European adventurers made their way to the Court of the Grand Mogul. Who could then have predicted that the omnipotence of the Grand Monarque would result in an elected President and the odd compromises which constitute a modern Republic ; or that the power of the Grand Mogul would pass into the hands of British traders, and would have as its out- ward and visible sign the great administrative barrack in St. James's Park ? Yet the memoirs of the adventurers who took service under Moguls and Marathas sufficiently show, in retrospect, that the glories of Imperial Delhi were hectic and evanescent, and that a speedy decline and fall of a luxurious and effeminate dynasty were inevitable.
Twenty years ago, those who were interested in Indian history hoped that in William Irvine, a retired Indian civilian, there might be found the Gibbon of the decaying Mogul Empire. During his Indian career, that of a zealous and efficient revenue officer, an expert in tenancy law and land settlement, Irvine had found a congenial parergon in collect- ing and collating Persian and Hindi MSS. relating to the history of the successors of Baber and Akbar. In the Indian Antiquary and elsewhere be had published chapters of what might have been the standard description of India under Mussulman rule. He had abandoned official ambitions at the earliest possible moment, and had devoted the leisure of retire- ment to study. Himself a laborious and conscientious scholar, he was generous in placing his erudition and the treasures of his library at the disposal of other students. He worked, to use his own words, "quietly and happily," even when failing health made the labour of the pen toilsome and difficult.
There was in his temperament, however, something of the romantic element which often distinguishes the Scottish scholar, and when his indefatigable inquiries for all available materials for the history of Mohammedan India resulted in the rediscovery, at Berlin and Venice, of the long-lost memoirs of Nicholas Manned, he could not resist the temptation to devote seven laborious but happy years to the translation and annotation of the Stone do Mogor. The India Office gave the retired civilian generous and enlightened support, and Mammal's book was finally published in four sumptuous volumes, illustrated with reproductions of the portraits of Mogul warriors and statesmen which the Venetian had collected in the course of his travels. The translation is as picturesque and vivid as the original : the annotations furnish a remarkable proof of the editor's erudition and scrupulous care for accuracy of detail. The Stork and a work on The Army of the Indian Moguls were finished. A more ambitions task, the history of The Later Moguls, remains a fragment. Irvine did not quite succeed in becoming the Gibbon of Mogul domination in India. But he set an example of conscientious and disinterested industry which has already found imitators in India and elsewhere. Professor Jadu Nath Sarkar's History of Aurangseb could hardly. have been written but for Irvine's help and encouragement, and it may well be that, in Bengal or elsewhere, some young historian may devote his life to the • A, Popp of Mogul Naar. 1853.1703: Deng an abridged edition of the
• ge.oin do Moro" of Nt000lee Manurci. Tranalaterl William Irelag.
!slaps, John ktavra,vi CIO& ast4 . utilization of the materials which the Scottish civilian so zealously collected.
In the meanwhile, Miss Irvine has been well advised in giving us a popular and abbreviated version of Manuoci's memoirs. As she says, "the Stories do Mogor, as a whole, is very lengthy and somewhat diffuse, and a great deal of it is interesting only to the student and the scholar." Much more of Manucci's ingenuous tale is one of the most fascinating stories in existence of adventure and travel in India at a period full of romantic interest. His steadfast loyalty to the Data Sbukoh, brother and rival of Aurangzeb, is creditable alike to him and his master. To shrewdness and sturdy common-sense he joined that rarest form of humour which permits the humorist to smile at his own frailties. Moliere himself might have laughed at the adventures of this remarkable midecin malgre lui, and the merry jest on p. 202 might have pleased Cervantes or Le Sage. Nor is the book without interest for students of contemporary India. It may be that we take current problems too seriously, and forget that the Indian character contains a real vein of humour. It is a curious fact that few of Mr. Tagore's Western admirers are aware that hisshumorous tales are at least as popular in Bengal as his mystical verses, and that the novelist, Bankin Chandra Chatterjee, was not only the composer of the Bands Materam hymn, but possessed and displayed a very delightful sense of fun.
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