Reinaud

Reinaud or M. Reinaud was a Sindian Historian. M. Reinaud was the learned historian of ancient India.

Introduction

The History of India, as Told by Its Own Historians/I. Mujmalu-t Tawáríkh (pp.100-101) states:

A PORTION of this most interesting unique work was published by M. Reinaud, in his Fragments Arabes et Persans inedits relatif à l Inde, from the MS. numbered 62 in the Bibliothèque du Roi at Paris. The MS. has been described in the Journal Asiatique at different times, by M. Quatremère and M. Mohl, and it had been previously drawn upon by Anquetil Duperron and Silvestre de Sacy.

The chapter published by M. Reinaud, with which we are here concerned, was not written by the author of the Mujmal himself, but was borrowed by him from an older work, of which he thus speaks,-"I have seen an ancient book of the Hindus which Abú Sálih bin Shu'aib bin Jámi' translated into Arabic from the Hindwání language (Sanskrit). This work was translated into Persian in 417 A.H. (1026 A.D.) by Abú-l Hasan 'Ali bin Muhammad al Jílí,¹ keeper of the library at Jurján for a chief of the Dílamites. The book I saw was in the handwriting of the author, and bore the date above given. It is the

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[p.101]: custom of the Hindu writers on philosophy to put speeches into the mouths of beasts and birds, as in the book Kalíla wa Dimna, and accordingly many such speeches are introduced into this book. I have here introduced the (account of the) origin of the kings and a short history of them, and I have copied it because it is not to be found anywhere else-but God knows."

The date of the original Arabic translation does not appear; it may or may not have been written before the work of Biládurí, but the "extracts" relate to an ancient period, and more especially to Sind, so that they come in most appropriately here at the beginning of the historical writings. The date of the Persian translation, and still more that of the Mujmal, would carry them onward to a later and less suitable position.

M. Reinaud is of opinion that the translated Sanskrit work was composed about the commencement of the Christian era, certainly long previous to the Rája Taranginí, and probably to the Mahá-bhárata; and that the subsequent reputation of that poem threw the translated work into the shade. If so, it would go far to show that the Mahá-bhárata is, as Wolfe and Heyne say of the Iliad, a collection of older poems already current; for there are many passages in Mujmalu-t Tawáríkh which are almost verbatim the same as they are at present preserved in the Mahá-bhárata.

Jat History

• M. Reinaud considered the term "Balhará" to represent Málwá Ráí or "King of Málwá.
• M. Reinaud considers that Nagarkot was called Bhim-nagar from Sri Bhima deva, of the Kabul dynasty.

• According to the Chinese pilgrim, Hwen Tsang, the capital of the kingdom of Po-li-ye-to-lo, which M. Reinaud has identified with Páryátra, or Bairat.

References

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