Lot 81

[Abu'l-Fadl ibn Mubarak]

Ayeen Akbery:

Books & Manuscripts

Auction: India in Ink: The Library of Dr Raj Krishna | 01 October 2026 from 10am | Lots 79 to 208

Estimate: £500 - £800

Description

or, the Institutes of the Emperor Akber. Translated from the Original Persian by Francis Gladwin. Calcutta: [at the Honourable Company's Press], 1783-4. Volumes 1-2 only (of 3), 4to (30 x 22cm), contemporary russia, rebacked, occasional text in Persian (printed with nasta'liq types), variable spotting, later ink-markings to title-pages, volume 1 dedication leaf with strip of ink-staining (possibly a printing-shop accident), H3 with repaired closed tear (via a slip pasted to verso, containing the obscured text printed with similar types to the original), 2Y1 and 3B4 with closed marginal tears, marginal worming to index [ESTC T146840; Shaw, Printing in Calcutta to 1800, 22 & 30, calling for an engraved portrait of Akbar in both volumes, mentioned by ESTC only in reference to ‘a London engraving of the Emperor Akbar inserted as a frontispiece to both volumes’ of the British Library copy] (2)

Provenance

INDIA IN INK: THE LIBRARY OF DR RAJ KRISHNA

Thomas Philip de Grey, 2nd Earl de Grey (1781-1859), British statesman (engraved armorial Wrest Park bookplates to pastedowns).

Footnote

One of the first books printed in Calcutta, preceded by a small number of largely ephemeral works including pamphlets, almanacs, government regulations and readers. It was also the second published book by the East India Company administrator Francis Gladwin, and the work which established his reputation as a Persian scholar. 'This work was widely esteemed by contemporaries as embodying, in the words of Gladwin's generous patron Warren Hastings, “the original constitution of the Mogul Empire”, knowledge of which would enable British administration to return to “first principles” … Gladwin's translation was not to be superseded for another hundred years … A stream of other publications followed, making Gladwin the most frequently published author in late eighteenth-century Calcutta' (ODNB). A third volume appeared in 1788.