44 SOCIAL SCIENTIST Badauni was given 10,000 copper iankas and a horse in inam, and hoped to finish his task quickly in two or three months.29 But he finished his Tarikh apparently before he finished his translation. It is curious that Badauni does not refer to Shah Muhammad Shahabadi at all. The surviving manuscripts of the Persian Rajatarangini defective as they are, do not seem to elucidate the matter.30 One possibility is that Shah Muhammad Shahabadi was the translator of the work under Zainul 'Abidin, and the work was merely transcribed for Akbar's library; in that case a slip must be assumed on the part of Abul Fazl. The task of a fresh rendering was assigned to Badauni, after the Ain-i Akbari had been completed, so that the new translation would not be mentioned by Abul Fazl at all. I may mention that I exclude Faizi's Nal Daman from consideration here because it is not really a translation by a retelling in Persian of the Indian tale. When one looks at Akbar's translation project, one realises that its centre piece is the Mahabharata; and it should therefore be of little surprise to us that the Vaishnavite facet of Hinduism was more prominent at Akbar's Court than the Saivite. The Upanishads and Sankaracharya are not represented. It was left to Akbar's great grandson Dara Shukoh, to add the Upanishads to the Brahmanical literature available in Persian, through a splendid translation, Sirr-f-Akbar. The scientific texts translated were also far too few. But it would be churlish to question the extent and coverage of Akbar's translation project in this manner. What stands out, when, to use Abul Fazl's favourite phrase, 'the veil is lifted*, is the lofty vision and grandiose design of a shared, unified intellectual heritage of all mankind. NOTES AND REFERENCES 1. Abdul Qadir Badauni, Muntakhabut Tawarikh, ed. Ali Ahamad and Lees, Bib. Ind. Calcutta, 1864-69, II, pp. 212-13 2. Ibid., II, p. 213. 3. Anonymous, Dabistan-i-Mazahib, Bombay ed; p. 265. I have not been able to identify Nain Jot, apparently a Brahman divine or scholar at Akbar's Court. 4. Abul Fazl, Akbamama, Bib. Ind. Calcutta, 1873-«7, III, pp. 408-9. 5. Ain-i Akbari, Blochmann, Calcutta, 1866-67,1, pp. 115-16. 6. Badauni, II, pp. 319-21. 7. Br.Mus.Or. 12,076. This MS is illustrated by Akbar's painters. The date of transcription is given at the end of Chapter (fan) XVII on f. 136a. 8. Br.Mus.Or. 12,076 f. 138b. It is interesting to find Shaikh Bhawan reappearing as a translator despite his misadventures with the Atharva-Veda. 9. Ain-i Akbari, p. 115. 10. Aw, I, pp. 117-18. 11. See an early version of the Akbamama, cited by Iqtidar Alam Khan, 'Akbar's Personality Traits and World View,' Seminar on Akbar at Aligarh, 9-11 October 1992 (Unpublished).