The career and scholarship of Edward William Lane, therenowned Orientalist and Arabic lexicographer, havebeen closely described and evaluated. His life issoon to be the subject of a further study, oneplanned by Jason Thompson. It may therefore beopportune to take a look at a modest cache ofletters in Arabic, both addressed to and written byLane, which is held in the Griffith Institute at theAshmolean Museum in Oxford. These letters weredeposited, along with a manuscript version of Lane'sunpublished Description of Egyptand other papers and drawings, by hisgreat-great-nephew, Austin Lane Poole, in 1947.

The opening line of Abu'l Faẓl's notice inĀ'īn-i Akbarī on“top” (gunpowder artillery)describes it as “a wonderful lock (qufl-ishiqarf) for securing the august edificeof royalty (iqbāl sarā-i jahānbānī)and a key (kulīd-i dilkushā) to thedoor of conquest (darwāza-ikishwarsitānī)” He then proceeds to claimthat except for the Mediterranean/Ottomanterritories (Rūmistān), in no otherplace was gunpowder artillery available in suchabundance as in the Mughal Empire. These statementscannot be brushed aside as simple rhetoric. On thecontrary, they may well be perceived as reflectingthe significance gunpowder artillery had come toacquire with regard to two important matters,namely, (a) strengthening of central authority and(b) rapid military conquests leading to theannexation of vast territories.

We do not know a lot about the exact sources of thePāli manuscript collection kept today in the RoyalAsiatic Society. Records are very few and scatteredhere and there in the publications of the Society.Mentions of donors or vendors of the Pāli MSS.collected since 1825 are not at all detailed: mostof the time there are no titles, no sufficientmaterial description, no measurements, not evennaming the exact language or the script, no registernumbers or shelfmarks; we are just told about thename of the donor, or conditions of the sale, thedate of acquisition (but not the date of the MS.),sometimes place or circumstances of acquisition.

The genealogical seal of the Mughal emperors of Indiawas one of the most potent symbols of Mughalimperial authority. The distinctive design of theseal - a central circle containing the name of theruling emperor, surrounded by a series of smallercircles, like satellites in orbit, containing thenames of his ancestors up to Timūr (1336–1405) eachpreceded by the filiative ibn - wasa self-evident masterpiece of imperial symbolism, inwhich the authority of the ruling emperor was bothlegitimised and enhanced by the deliberate referenceto his illustrious ancestors. The inscription wasdesigned to be read starting with the rulingemperor's name in the middle, then moving into theouter circle to the name of his immediatepredecessor (at 1 o'clock) and, continuingclockwise, finishing up at Timur, who always hadpride of place at the top of the seal. In this way,each ruler was expressed as the son of hispredecessor, while at the same time, from hiscentral position abutting all the smaller circles,the ruling emperor could be read symbolically as the“son” of each of his ancestors.