تحقيق ما للهند (Al-Biruni's India — Sachau edition, BnF)

VII

that the author is a Muslim. More than anything else he loves truth, and is a stern adversary of untruthfulness and want of sincerity. Whilst he never unduly obtrudes his own personality in the learned discussions of his book, on certain occasions, when roused to moral indignation, he himself comes forward as a champion of the truth, a sharply cut character of a highly individual stamp, full of real courage and not refraining from dealing hard blows, when anything which is good or right seems to him to be at stake.

If Muhammadans may with just pride consider the present book as a star of the first magnitude in the heaven of Arabian literature, Hindus may on their part acknowledge it as a particular favour of fortune, that a truth-loving and highly cultivated man has left them a picture of the civilization of their ancestors as it was in his time. They will not agree with many details in his description, they will perhaps find their feelings ruffled by some of his criticisms, but at the same time they will readily admit that his only aim is to arrive at historic truth and to represent it sine ira ac studio without anger or bias, nor will they overlook the fact that on other occasions he speaks of their civilization in words of unconditional admiration.

§ 2. Fate of the book in Europe.

The book may be said to have a history of its own even prior to its publication. Referring the reader for more copious details to the treatise of Prince Baldassare Boncompagni, Intorno all' opera d'Albiruni sull' India Regarding the work of Albiruni on India, Roma 1869, we must briefly notice the fate which it has experienced in Europe.

The Paris manuscript (Bibliothèque Nationale National Library, Fonds Ducaurroy 22) entered the library 1816.

It was not until 1839 that it attracted the attention of M. Reinaud.

Soon afterwards, April 1843, S. Munk promises to edit and translate the whole work.

Reinaud publishes his Fragments Arabes et Persans inédits relatifs à l'Inde Unpublished Arabic and Persian fragments relating to India in the Journal Asiatique Asiatic Journal 1844—1845, and soon after as a separate publication in 1845. This treatise contains, besides other valuable materials, chapters 18, 40 and 49 of the Indica Alberuni’s treatise on India.

M. Reinaud reads his Mémoire géographique, historique et scientifique sur l'Inde Geographic, historical, and scientific memoir on India before the Institut in the years 1845 and 1846, and publishes it in 1849. Its contents are almost exclusively drawn from the Indica Alberuni’s treatise on India.

In Germany, Alexander von Humboldt was the first to direct public attention to the book in his Kosmos Cosmos, 1847.

In 1860, 13th October, Jules Mohl proposes to the Société Asiatique Asiatic Society of Paris to charge Messieurs Woepcke and Mac Guckin de Slane with the edition