relate it with
all the _naivete_ imaginable.

I saw at Agra Mirza Kam Baksh, the eldest son of Sulaiman Shikoh, the
eldest son of the brother of the present Emperor. He had spent a
season with us at Jubbulpore, while prosecuting his claim to an
estate against the Raja of Riwa. The Emperor, Shah Alam, in his
flight before our troops from Bengal (1762), struck off the high road
to Delhi at Mirzapore, and came down to Riwa, where he found an
asylum during the season of the rains with the Riwa Raja, who
assigned for his residence the village of Makanpur.[3] His wife, the
Empress, was here delivered of a son, the present Emperor, of
Hindustan, Akbar Shah;[4] and the Raja assigned to him and his heirs
for ever the fee simple of this village. As the members of this
family increased in geometrical ratio, under the new system, which
gave them plenty to eat with nothing to do, the Emperor had of late
been obliged to hunt round for little additions to his income; and in
his search he found that Makanpur gave name to a 'pargana', or little
district, of which it was the capital, and that a good deal of
merchandize passed through this district, and paid heavy dues to the
Raja. Nothing, he thought, would be lost by trying to get the whole
district instead of the village; and for this purpose he sent down
Kam Baksh, the ablest man of the whole family, to urge and prosecute
his claim; but the Raja was a close, shrewd man, and not to be done
out of his revenue, and Kam Baksh was obliged to return minus some
thousand rupees, which he had spent in attempting to keep up
appearances.

The best of us Europeans feel our deficiencies in conversation with
Muhammadans of high rank and education, when we are called upon to
talk upon subjects beyond the everyday occurrences of life. A
Muhammadan gentleman of education is tolerably acquainted with
astronomy, as it was taught by Ptolemy; with the logic and ethics of
Aristotle and Plato; with the works of Hippocrates and Galen, through
those of Avicenna, or, as they call him, Abu-Alisina;[5] and he is
very capable of talking upon all subjects of philosophy, literature,
science, and the arts, and very much inclined to do so; and of
understanding the nature of the improvements that have been made in
them in modern times. But, however capable we may feel of discussing
these subjects, or explaining these improvements in our own language,
we all feel ourselves very much at a loss when we attempt to do