THE REIGN OF AKBAR (1556-1605) 81 concluding section of the Akbarnama, presents very different features. Its purport, as described in the preface! is to record such of Akbar’s activities “as illustrate the worldly side of his nature and his greatness as a king,” his work as a spiritual leader being intentionally passed over; and the author adds, with entire justice, that he is offering students “a present, which may seem difficult to understand, but which is easy; or rather, which may seem easy, but is in reality difficult.” The work is heterogeneous. The latter portion consists mainly of a description of Hindu culture, and does not con- cern us; the earlier portion, which I shall speak of shortly as the Ain, presents an account of the action taken by Akbar in each of the different departments in which the adminis- tration was organised, and thus carries out the declared object. No one who has read the Ain and the Akbarnima side by side can regard them as the work of the same author: the Ain is a jumble of all styles? and no style at all, the lack of proportion is glaring, the diction is often crabbed and technical. Some small portions are clearly from the pen of Abul Fazl, as Blochmann pointed out in his preface to the text, but it is equally clear that those which most concern us are the work of very different writers. Taking the book as a whole, it must be regarded as a collection of official papers contributed by the various administrative departments, edited by Abul Fazl, and containing occasional matter from his pen; but in essence consisting of what the departments furnished and the editor did not reject. The chapters which deal with the agrarian system can be under- stood only as the work of one or more officials in the Revenue Ministry, too familiar with its routine to explain details, and, I think, inclined to be reticent over departmental failures; it is open to us to explain obscurity as the result either of faulty drafting, or of hasty editing, but we can never assume that the writers were ignorant of their subject. While the two works are distinct, they are not unrelated. [n some passages the Akbarnima gives a summary of the Ain; to which it refers for details: in others, the Akbarnima ! Ain, i. 7; Blochmann, i. x. . ' On the style see Blochmann'’s preface, i. 4.