After an interval of about five years, the second volume of
Mr. Alexander Rogers' translation of Jahangir's Memoirs has been
published by the Royal Asiatic Society. It is a smaller work than
the first volume, for it only extends over six years of the reign,
as against the twelve years of its predecessor. Even then it does not
include the whole of the reign, for that lasted twenty-two years. The
two volumes, however, contain all that Jahangir wrote or supervised. It
will be found, I think, that the present volume is fully as interesting
as its predecessor. The accounts of the Zodiacal coinage (pp. 6 and
7), and of the comet, or new star (p. 48), the notice of the Plague
in Agra (pp. 65-67), and the elaborate description of Kashmir, under
the chronicle of the 15th year, are valuable, and a word should be
said for the pretty story of the King and the Gardener's daughter
(p. 50), and for the allusions to painters and pictures.
If Babur, who was the founder of the Moghul Empire in India, was
the Cæsar of the East, and if the many-sided Akbar was an epitome
of all the great Emperors, including Augustus, Trajan, Hadrian,
Marcus Aurelius, Julian, and Justinian. Jahangir was certainly of
the type of the Emperor Claudius, and so bore a close resemblance
to our James I. All three were weak men, and under the influence
of their favourites, and all three were literary, and at least two
of them were fond of dabbling in theology. All three were in their
wrong places as rulers. Had James I. (and VI. of Scotland) been, as
he half wished, the Keeper of the Bodleian, and Jahangir been head
of a Natural History Museum, they would have been better and happier
men. Jahangir's best points were his love of nature and powers of
observation, and his desire to do justice. Unfortunately, the last of
these merits was vitiated by a propensity for excessive and recondite
punishments. Like his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather,
he was addicted to drugs and alcohol, and he shortened his life in
this way. He made no addition to the imperial territories, but, on
the contrary, diminished them by losing Qandahar to the Persians. But
possibly his peaceful temper, or his laziness, was an advantage, for it
saved much bloodshed. His greatest fault as a king was his subservience
to his wife, Nur-Jahan, and the consequent quarrel with his son,
Shah Jahan, who was the ablest and best of his male children. The
last years of his reign were especially melancholy, for he suffered
from asthma and other diseases; and he had to endure the ignominy
of being for a while a captive to one of his own servants--Mahabat
Khan. He died on the borders of Kashmir, when on his way to Lahore,
in October, 1627, in the fifty-ninth year of his age, and was buried
at Shahdara, near Lahore, where his widow, Nur-Jahan, and her brother
are also interred. At the time of his death his son Shah Jahan was at
Junair in the Deccan, and there the news was conveyed in a wonderfully
short time by a Hindu courier. Jahangir was succeeded by Shah Jahan,
who lost no time in getting rid of his relatives, for, like the Turk,
he bore no kinsman near the throne. Indeed, he is strongly suspected
of having killed his elder brother, Khusrau, several years before.
I am indebted to Mr. Ellis, of the India Office, for revising the
proofs.