A Rare Work by Sir Henry Miers Elliot

Abstract

READERS of the JOURNAL may be interested to know of a work on the history of India which seems to be practically unknown, though by no less important a scholar than Sir Henry Miers Elliot. This work has recently come into the possession of the Cleveland Public Library's John G. White Collection of Folklore and Orientalia, already rich in material on the history and civilization of India, and is herewith called to the attention of historians and Orientalists. Sir Henry Miers Elliot's life work, the Mohammedan historians of India, has come down chiefly in two works. One is the Bibliographical Index to the Historians of Muhammedan India, of which the first and only volume was issued at Calcutta in 1849. After his death his manuscripts were edited by Dowson in eight volumes as The History of India, as Told by Its Own Historians (London, 186777). Both works are well known; they are to be found in a number of libraries, and naturally in the White Collection. In Elliot's last days it appears that he doubted the powers of his mind, and, to test them, wrote the book here discussed. The titlepage reads: Appendix to the Arabs in Sind, Vol. III, part 1 of the Historians of India. Cape Town, Saul Solomon & Co., 1853. This was issued in paper covers, the front cover bearing a note: For Private Circulation. 40 Copies. It contains 283 pages, plus three preliminary leaves; thus it is a work of some size. It includes essays on the history of Sind, warfare in India, the ethnology of Sind, and a 38-page bibliographical excursus on Indian ,Voyages and Travels-the last a particularly useful compilation. The White copy came from the library of Sir R. C. Temple, the well-known scholar. It contains a letter, dated 1871, from Elliot's brother, from which I quote the following extracts: ' . . .I send herewith a brochure written by my brother at the Cape during the illness which terminated in his death. He told me that he wrote it to satisfy himself that the powers of his mind were not impaired. It is of course very rare; for no more than 40 copies were printed, of which number more than half, I think, were sent into Germany, amongst whose scholars his labours were and are held in the highest estimation.' If additional testimony of the Appendix to the Arabs in Sind