Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri and Punjab: a guide to editions and evidence

Choose a named edition and volume

The title Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri can lead to several different editions and translations of Jahangir’s memoirs. Wellcome’s record identifies the English translation by Alexander Rogers, edited by Henry Beveridge, published by the Royal Asiatic Society in London in 1909–1914. It describes two volumes. The first covers the first twelve regnal years, while the second continues from the thirteenth to the nineteenth.[1]

Those volume divisions are useful when tracing a citation to a year of the reign. Record the translator and editor as well as the original author; a regnal-year heading and a printed page can then be checked together. Wellcome provides an online viewing link, but the catalogue also displays a copyright warning. Access to a digital item should not be mistaken for an unrestricted licence to reproduce the entire scan.[1]

Different textual witnesses

Beveridge’s preface to the first volume describes Rogers’s use of Sayyid Ahmad’s nineteenth-century printed text and the editor’s comparison with other manuscripts. He specifically warns about defective readings of proper names and describes adding corrections and notes. The preface is therefore part of the evidence a reader needs. An English spelling is not automatically an unambiguous transcription of the original name or place.[2]

The same preface distinguishes the Rogers translation from David Price’s earlier version and criticises the textual basis of that work. This is Beveridge’s editorial judgement, which should be attributed when used. It provides a practical reason to check which translation a secondary author actually cited. Two books called memoirs of Jahangir cannot safely be treated as interchangeable witnesses merely because their English titles sound alike.[2]

Read the Punjab passage as an imperial account

For a Lahore enquiry, begin with the first volume’s chapter on Khusrau’s flight, describing preparations at Lahore fort and movements of supporters and opponents. Its evaluations reflect imperial authority. A ruler’s language of loyalty and rebellion is evidence of that standpoint, rather than a neutral summary of every participant’s experience.[2]

A translation manuscript is a different source

The Royal Asiatic Society’s archive separately holds file AR/1/1 in the papers of Alexander Rogers. Its catalogue describes the handwritten draft of the first translated volume, with 684 pages in notebooks and additional corrections by Beveridge. The material is in English and is catalogued in two folders, with a creation date range of approximately 1880–1900. This is a working translation manuscript, not Jahangir’s own seventeenth-century handwriting.[3]

That distinction opens a different research question: how did the English edition take shape? The archive’s description provides evidence that drafting, inserted corrections and editorial collaboration can themselves be studied. It does not establish the content of any particular handwritten correction, because the notebooks were not inspected for this guide. Cite the file reference when asking about the draft, and cite the printed volume and page when discussing the published translation.[3]