Begin with the work’s administrative arrangement
Exeter’s Famine and Dearth project introduces Abul Fazl’s Ain-i-Akbari as the third volume of the Akbarnama, organised into five books. It distinguishes the palace establishment, military establishment and government of the country from later material on sciences, religious traditions, culture and Akbar’s sayings. The page also identifies several manuscript witnesses and explains that its own English text is a selection concerned with food, charity and resource management. This is a curated research extract rather than a complete edition.[1]
Its displayed title page names Blochmann’s translation and Phillott’s second-edition revision. Preserve those names and the project’s selection notice when citing an extract; a digital page can combine older translation, later editing and present-day curation.[1]
Find the Punjab section without imposing modern boundaries
Packard Humanities Institute’s volume 2 contents locate Lahor at page 310, followed by named doab sections, and Multan at page 325, followed by further subdivisions. Sirhind appears earlier, within the Delhi sequence, at page 295. This arrangement is useful evidence of how the translated volume organises territory. It should not be silently replaced with present-day national, state or district boundaries. Retain the historical heading, volume and printed page when following a reference. The volume also lists a main index and a supplementary place-name index, offering two further routes into its geography. The contents provide a route to an account; they do not verify a modern map or establish that every assessment listed was collected in practice.[2]
Keep a court-household example within its limits
In Exeter’s selected Ain 22 passage, the imperial household brings drinking water from Hardwar while Akbar is in Punjab; the account separately describes water used in cooking. This offers a precise enquiry into court provisioning and travel. It does not establish the drinking habits of Punjab’s population. The passage’s speaker, household setting and translated edition should accompany any historical inference drawn from it.[1]
Sources & notes
Source records include access dates and, where known, limits on what was examined. Checks used AI assistance; independent human or specialist review has not been completed.
- Famine and Dearth project, University of Exeter; texts collected by Ayesha Mukherjee, Amlan Das Gupta and Azarmi Dukht Safavi. Ain-I-Akbari, volume 1: introductory notes and selected extracts ↗university-authored source introduction and primary-text selection · Source date: publication date not established · Locator: Introductory notes; selection notice; Blochmann/Phillott title page; Ain 22, pp.57–58 on imperial water supply. Accessed 2026-11-01.Actual complete page inspected. Modern project introduction and underlying translated extract are separately allocated in notes. Metadata 1872 conflicts with displayed second-edition Phillott identity, so edition year is not asserted. Court water supply is not a general account of all Punjab households; no monetary conversions or guessed location for Panhan.Return to Begin with the work’s administrative arrangement, paragraph 1 ↑Return to Begin with the work’s administrative arrangement, paragraph 2 ↑Return to Keep a court-household example within its limits, paragraph 1 ↑
- Packard Humanities Institute, Persian Literature in Translation; Abul Fazl, translated edition. The Ain-i-Akbari, volume 2, textID 000702052 ↗institutional primary-text transcription and contents · Source date: publication date not established · Locator: Contents, BookThird:Lahor p.310, doabs 315–325, Multan 325–334, Sirhind 295; printed page structure. Accessed 2026-11-01.Actual contents and internal title inspected. Header’s Gladwin attribution conflicts with the volume’s bibliographic identity, so no translator is assigned to volume 2 here. Not every linked province account or revenue table read. The modern Exeter introduction is a separately authored interpretation.Return to Find the Punjab section without imposing modern boundaries, paragraph 1 ↑
Record PH-COL-0013 · English edition · human review not performed