40 SOCIAL SCIENTIST Bhawan*s assertiveness, in the beginning, than by any independent indication of its contents. Badauni is, however, not right in saying that the translation was so unsatisfactory as to be forgotten. Abul Fazi records in the Ain-i Akbari (c. 1595) that among the important works translated upon Akbar*s orders was *the book Atharban, which, according to the beliefs of these people, is one of the four Divine Books, (and which) was translated by Haji Ibrahim Sirhindi into Persian.'5 No manuscript of this is, however, known to exist. The second major work to be translated was the immensely long and rich compilation, the Mahabharata. The work started in A.H. 990/1582, and Badauni, again, is our main informant as to how it began. Writing under the year A.H. 990/1582, he says: Collecting together the learned men of India, His Majesty directed that the book Mahabharat should be translated. For some nights His Majesty personally (had it) explained to Naqib Khan, who wrote out the resultant text in Persian. On the third night His Majesty summoned me and ordered me to translate it in collaboration with Naqib Khan. In three or four months out of the eighteen chapters (fan) of that stock of useless fables, at which eighteen worlds may remain in wonderment, I wrote out two chapters. And what censures I did not hear (from Akbar), so that the accusations that I am an 'unlawful earner' or 'a turnip eater* (apparently expressions used by Akbar) meant as if my destiny from these books was just this. Destiny is destiny! Thereafter Mulla Shiri and Naqib Khan completed that section, and one section Sultan Haji Thanesari 'Munfarid* brought to completion. Shaikh Faizi was then appointed to write it in verse and prose, but he too did not complete more than two Chapters (fan). Again, the said Haji wrote out two sections and rectified the errors which were committed in the first round, and fitting one part with another, compiled a hundred fasciculi. The direction was to establish exactitude in a minute manner so that nothing of the original should be lost. In the end upon some fault, His Majesty ordered him (Haji Thanesari) to be dismissed and sent away to Bhakkar, his native city, where he still is. Most of the interpreters and translators are in hell along with Korus and Pandavs, and as for the remaining ones, may God save them, and mercifully destine them to repent. ... His Majesty named the work Razmnaama (Epic), and had it illustrated and transcribed in many copies, and the nobles too were ordered to have it transcribed by way of obtaining blessings. Shaikh Abul Fazi, contrary to the dictates of the commentary on the Quranic 'Ay at al'Kursi that he had composed, wrote a preface of the length of two quires (juzv) for that work.6