Overthrowing the long-accepted thesis that the concept of archiving was gifted to India by the British,a large collection of 1.36 lakh Mughal-era official documents now in the possession of the National Archives of India decisively proves that archiving was integral to the country centuries ago. Way back in the winter of 1961,it came as a surprise even to the authorities of the National Archives,the countrys largest repository of archival documents,when the collection arrived from faraway Hyderabad as musty,brittle bundles of yellow paper in disarray. According to the accession register,there were as many as 1,35,931 documents and official records say the documents were acquired from a 'private party,one called Abbas Husain,who is said to have found the bundles of documents in one of the old forts of Hyderabad. Husain requested that the collection be named after one of his ancestors,and hence the nearly 1.36 lakh documents now lie on the racks of the archives as the 'Inayat Jung collection. These documents,mainly in Persian,were received in bundles without any arrangement. When officials started working on them,their historical significance came to the fore. These were defining documents as they proved that archiving was a known practice in the country right from the era of the Mughals and not something gifted to us by the British. The vast corpus of revenue records,grants,conferment of titles,judicial and administrative documents starting from 1658 to 1774 were all preserved, says Prof Mushirul Hasan,eminent historian and Director General,National Archives. More than 35 years after receiving the priceless collection,the National Archives is finally all set to put it in public domain. The entire collection has been digitised by Noor International Microfilm Centre. The collection will soon be made available in the form of compact disks for easy access to scholars. Selected copies of the documents from Aurangzebs reign will be published in a facsimile edition and limited copies will be given out to libraries across the country. What could be a major collection of primary sources for researchers and scholars,the collection comprises official administrative and judicial records,day-to-day accounts and revenue figures which were sent regularly to the Diwan of Deccan by the individual Diwans of six provinces of Deccan,including Hyderabad,Bijapur,Golconda,Khandesh,Barar. The documents throw light on various administrative and judicial decisions taken by the Mughal rulers such as transfer orders of local officials,imposition of taxes,revenue collection records,et al. The earliest documents in the collection date back to the mid-17th century (Aurangzebs reign) and follow through the reign of the next rulers from Azam Shah to Shah Alam II (1768-74). Mohammad Irfaan,a senior archivist who has been working on the project for more than two decades now,says,The Indian Historical Records Commission in its 37th session held in the Capital in October 1966 decided to publish descriptive lists of the entire collection. However,it was such a huge collection that it took 35 years to finish docketing and listing the documents. All the documents of the collection have been descriptively catalogued on docket covers and arranged in chronological order up to Muhammad Shah (1719-48) and work on the remaining documents is still on. Having overcome the hurdles of preserving the voluminous collection,the next challenge came in reading and sorting the documents. Mostly in Persian,some of them are also bilingual and have text written in local languages such as Telugu or Kannada along with Persian. For scholars including Irfaan,who are familiar with the language,the challenge was to read the complicated 'shikasta writing. Considered a difficult and arbitrary form,shikasta can be read by very few. We have a tie-up with the Iran Culture House that has provided us with enormous support in deciphering the documents. However,here at the Archives,it has been a small team who can read the writing and because of this it took a longer period to read,decipher and sort the documents. As of now,there are just four of us who can read this form of writing, Irfaan says.
