Sunday, November 19, 2017

Diary Lost in Translation

Raja Todar Mal's diary, considered one of the rarest among the 5 crore documents stored at the Bihar State Archives, rests unread because no current generation scholar can translate it.

"This diary of Todar Mal is actually on land records and settlement of Bhagalpur during the Mughal times. It was found lying in the record room of Bhagalpur and was transferred to us. It is in old Urdu and Persian and we have been unable to get it translated as we don't have any scholar of these languages with us," said archives director Vijay Kumar.


Vijay revealed that he had contacted a few scholars "to get the diary translated. They agreed to do so, but did not turn up. I showed it to a Muslim scholar in Patna City and he said that the diary was invaluable as it contained the names of localities of Bhagalpur over 400 years ago and information about landholdings".

read more here @ Telegraph India


No comments:

Post a Comment