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SEPTEMBER, 1878.)
BOOK NOTICES.
237
who has made the same attempt upon tales from the Ampar í Suhaili and other Persian and Arabic stories was evidently not merely cramming for an examination when he sat with his Munshi. Such books, too, do some good in familiarizing the Eng. lish public with the lighter forms of Oriental literature, and may stimulate a few young scholars to make themselves acquainted with the original; while the metrical talent of the translator is certainly much better employed in such exercises than in writing slangy Lays. Some of the translations are very spirited; and the following extract is interesting as exemplifying a curious system of mnemonics not yet entirely superseded by the drier methods of our Government schools. The subject is a young Tatar learning his alphabet.
"He marked the ranked letters go
In ordered lines as warriors do.
or even Orientalist students, can find no possible interest in the matters which seem to Mr. Morris of first-rate importance—the exact gate of a town where the police-barrack or school is situated, or the wreck of an ill-managed steamer near CocoDada, and the suspension of its skipper's certificate.
On the other hand, writing of the great Eastern Chalukya dynasty, and of their very capital (Rajamal.endri), he thinks that there would be little use in giving here the bare list of these sovereigns," though he does bestow upon the site a notice which seems to have been translated from a Tehsildar's report-a remark which applies moro or less to the whole of this bulky volume except a few extracts from the Madras and India Office records. As long as any encouragement is given to the compilation of district manuals in this Philistine style the Government of India need not be surprised to find few scholars among its servants.
There Alif lifted high the spear, And Ha the moony shield did bear,
And Ba his bended bow. The crooked sabre Lam did wield; And Mim, conspicuous in the field,
His helmet crest did show." The allusion, of course, is to the forms of the characters.
The worst fault of the book is that some of the pieces show the influence of too severe a course of the Ingoldsby Legends, the style of which is hardly congenial to the subject.
A DESCRIPTIVE AND HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OY THE GODA.
VERY DISTRICT, in the Presidency of Madras. BY HANBY MORRIS, formerly of the Madras Civil Service, author of "A History of India for the use of Schools in India," and other works. (London: Trübner & Co. 1878.)
It is much to be regretted that the time, trouble, and cost which have been spent on the work under notice have been almost wasted. Mr. Morris's book abridged by two-thirds and bound in paper would have been valuable to subordinate officers in the collectorate of which he has constituted himself the vates sacer. It contains a great bulk of tabulated returns-which no one will ever read who has not equal access to the original materials in the Collector's office, a great many quotations from works equally accessible to any one ever likely to want them, and no spark of original matter worth reading at all.
All this would be nothing if the book was not published in an expensive form at & first-rate publisher's, and under the supposed patronage of the India Office, instead of getting its deserts at a Secretariat press in Madras. The general public,
HISTOIRE DE L'ASIE CENTRALE depuis les dernières années du règne de Nadir Chah (1153) jusqu'en 1233 de l'Hégire (1740-1818). Par Mir Abdoul Kerim Boukhary, publiée, traduite, et annotée par Charles Schefer, premier secretaire interprète du gouvernement pour les langues orientales, &c. &c. Paris : Emest Leroux, 1876.
Mir Abd'ul Karim Bukhari, it appears from the preface to the translation of the work before us, was a Sayyid of Bukhåra in the diplomatic service of the Amir Shah Mahmud of that Khinate. In this character he visited Kasmir, Earopean and Asiatio Russia, and a large part of the intervening countries. Finally, in company with Mirza Muhammad Yusuf, Ambassador of Bukh&ra, he arrived, in September 1807, in Constantinople. In one year more he was the sole survivor of the embassy, and apparently took this as a hint from Providence that he had wandered far enough, took to himself a wife (he does not say whether he had left any at home), and settled in the village of Beshik-Tash, in Roumelia, "whereof the charms are equal to those of Paradise."
While here he became acquainted with Arif Bey, then master of the ceremonies at the Porto. For him the Mir compiled a sort of joint Gazetteer and Almanach de Gotha of Central Asia, of which a single manuscript exists. This, at the sale of the Bey's library in 1851, fortunately fell into the hands of a worthy possessor, M. Charles Schefor, who has had the text printed at Bouldk, and now publishes it with a French translation, numerous and valuable notes and appendices, and a tolerable map. It is much to be regretted that there is no index-a capital fault in a work purely of reference.
The author, after a short preface, enumerates the districts of Afghánistán, and gives tables of
1 Of these be treata Laghman, JelAlAbad, and one or two others which we consider extra-Indian, M'in Hindo
stan. The same fiew may be troed in several of the e arlier MualmAn authors quoted in Elliot
