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

IX

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enabled me to refer to it over and over again in the long course of my labours.

In a letter dated 8th April 1876, Her Majesty’s India Office, I was informed that the Secretary of State for India in Council a senior British government official had sanctioned the grant of the necessary expenses for printing the Arabic original of the Indica Alberuni’s treatise on India. By this new proof of the high-minded protection which Her Majesty’s Indian Government has always accorded to any literary or scientific work connected with the interests of Her Indian subjects, every difficulty in the way of this publication was definitively removed.

Fourteen years have elapsed since I received the Indica Alberuni’s treatise on India at the hands of de Slane, who died 1878 the 4th Aug. During the first part of this period I could only occasionally set hands to the work, as my time was taken up partly by previous literary engagements, partly by the duties of my professoriate in the Universities of Vienna (1869—76) and Berlin (since Easter 1876).

I must apologize to the reader for introducing my own person in the very first pages of the book. Its importance seemed to justify a short communication as to the fate which it has hitherto met in Europe, and the long delay of my publication requires a word of explanation and excuse to all those who have taken a deep interest in my work and have never tired in urging me to labour on. Foremost among these friends were the late Edward Thomas and James Fergusson, and it will ever be a subject of painful regret with me, that it has not fallen to my lot to present them with the work which they so ardently desired to see finished.

§ 3. When and where the book was written.

When Alberuni wrote his Indica Alberuni’s treatise on India, his sovereign, king Maḥmûd, who had caused him to exchange his native country in Central-Asia for Afghanistan in the spring of A. H. 408 See Chronologie Orientalischer Völker Chronology of Oriental Peoples, Introduction p. XXXI., was no longer among the living, as throughout his book he attaches only such formulas of benediction to his name as are used in the case of deceased persons. His death had occurred on Thursday 30th April A.D. 1030 = A.H. 421, 23. Rabî’ II.

On the last page of the manuscript Schefer (fol. 161a) there is a note in Arabic which informs us that Alberuni had finished his autograph copy in Ghazna 1st Muḥarram first month of the Islamic calendar A.H. 423 = 19th December A.D. 1031, i.e. one year and a half after the death of Maḥmûd. Consequently the Indica Alberuni’s treatise on India must have been composed at some time between 30th April 1030 and 19th December 1031.