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ACCOUNT OF THE RELIGION
posed to personify the opinions of the king. This work does not, however, state the particular dogmas of the sect instituted by the monarch, and the sentiments of the sage are more of a negative than affirmative description, subversive of all existing systems rather than the foundations of a new code of belief.
From this uncertainty, however, we have a very satisfactory appeal, and find in a work written towards the close of Akbar's reign, a most minute recapitulation of progress of the Emperor's deflections from the faith of Mohammed, and the new institutes and observances which he laboured to introduce. The work is the Muntakhab at Tawáríkh compiled by Abd ul káder Malúk Shah Bedaoni".
Abd ul káder was a man of great learning; he was the fellow student of Abúlfazl and Feizi, and shared with them the countenance of the Emperor; he executed, at least in part, the translations from the Mahabharat and Rámáyana into Persian, and had completed that of the Sanskrit History of Cashmir, when in the 36tlı year of Akbar's reign he received the monarch's instructions to compile an historical account of Mohammed, the sovereigns of India, and the annals of his own reign.
Abd al káder accordingly began his work in the 36th year of Akbar's accession; in the manuscript we have consulted his history comes down to the 40th: but then stops rather abruptly, and seems to be in
* [H. M. Elliot's Bibliogr. Index. Vol. I. Calcutta 1849, p. 219ff.]
