The Empire of the Great Mogol (De Laet's Description of India and Fragment of Indian History - An Old and Rare Book)

This volume contains the English version of the famous Latin work De Imperio Magni Mogolis by De Laet, in two parts. The first part contains geographical, commercial and administrative details abstracted from various writings. The second part known as Broecke's Fragmentum gives a consecutive history of the reigns of Akbar and Jahangir.

The author is a pre-eminent compiler; and his compilations are learned and laborious. He has assiduously pieced together facts dug out of a host of writings and bear close resemblance to the original! Ptolemy and Texeira, Roe and Pelsaert, Terry and Finch, Writhington and Hawkins, Steele and Crowther, Benedict and Garcia are all largely drawn upon. It is a complete Gazetteer of Jahangir's India and depicts the Empire and the Imperial administration with a realism of touch and a minuteness of detail which has made this book enduringly useful.

My own part in the production of this little book has been small-merely consisting in the somewhat laborious. task of translating De Laet's crabbed Latin. The Introduction and notes have been written by my friend, Prof. S. N. Banerjee of Patiala.

Thanks are due to Dr. S. A. Khan of Allahabad University and to Mr. J. A. Chapman of the Imperial Library, Calcutta, for the loan of books: to Prof. J. N. Sarkar, the famous author of Aurangzib, for some suggestions regarding the annotation: and to Mr. S. Kumar (Superintendent, Imperial Library, Calcutta) for other help.

The annotator expresses his grateful thanks to Prof. S. H. Hodivala who has kindly gone through the book when in press and has made some suggestions and corrections which have been accepted.

Joannes De Lact, the Flemish geographer, philologist and naturalist, was born at Antwerp in 1593 and died at Leyden in 1649. His public life began at about 1625 when he 'occupied the position of the Director of the Company of the West Indies.' Later on he became one of the Directors of the Dutch East India Company. We do not know what part he played in the commercial extension of the Dutch nation in the East. But as a Director he was in touch with East Indian affairs. This enabled him to gain a knowledge of the East and especially of India, which knowledge he supplemented by a patient perusal of existing itineraries and geographies. The results of his studies he made available to the public by the publication in 1631 of the De Imperio Magni Mogolis, sive India vera, Commentarius ex variis auctoribus congestus.

**Contents and Sample Pages**