MUJMALU-T TAWA′RI′KH
custom of the Hindu writers on philosophy to put speeches into the mouths of beasts and birds, as in the book Kalíla wa Dimna, and accordingly many such speeches are introduced into this book. I have here introduced the (account of the) origin of the kings and a short history of them, and I have copied it because it is not to be found anywhere else—but God knows.”]
[The date of the original Arabic translation does not appear; it may or may not have been written before the work of Biládurí, but the “extracts” relate to an ancient period, and more especially to Sind, so that they come in most appropriately here at the beginning of the historical writings. The date of the Persian translation, and still more that of the Mujmal, would carry them onward to a later and less suitable position.]
M. Reinaud is of opinion that the translated Sanskrit work was composed about the commencement of the Christian era, certainly long previous to the Raja Taranginí, and probably to the Mahá-bhárata; and that the subsequent reputation of that poem threw the translated work into the shade. If so, it would go far to show that the Mahá-bhárata is, as Wolfe and Heyne say of the Iliad, a collection of older poems already current; for there are many passages in Mujmalu-t Tawáríkh which are almost verbatim the same as they are at present preserved in the Mahá-bhárata. Indeed, it might be said that the Mahá-bhárata was itself the work translated by the Arab, had not animals been represented as the speakers.
The learned Editor also thinks he has discovered in this extract indications of the Bráhmanical influence being established over the Kshatriyas, at an epoch subsequent to the war between the Pándavas and Kauravas. The inference, however, rests upon very questionable grounds, so questionable, indeed, that we are tempted to exclaim, as the pious Persian translator does at the end of each Indian fable recorded by him, “God only knows the truth!”
The author of the “Mujmalu-t Tawáríkh,” says that his
