Abdul Sattar Sheedi arranged for Arif Hussain of Talhar to translate from Sindhi the books of Muhammad Siddiq Mussafir, the Uderolal firman, and articles by various writers on Sufi Shah Inayat. Gian Chand of Sukkur translated from Sindhi two Hindu books about the River Indus and Shri Amar Udero Lal Sahib. Dr Yunus Jaffery translated the letter written in Persian by Maharaja Ranjit Singh to Alexander Burnes, which is quoted in Chapter 5. Wolf Forster translated an article on Indus valley rock art from German.
I also greatly appreciate the guidance of Martin Bemmann of Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, Felsbilder und Inschriften am Karakorum Highway, and of Professor Peter Robb at the School of Oriental and African Studies.
I used many libraries during the course of my research. Thank you to the archivists and staff of the Pakistan Institute of International Affairs in Karachi, the Laar Museum and Library in Badin, the Sindhology Library at Jamshoro University (Sindh), the Sadhubela Temple Library in Sukkur, the Reference Library of the Golden Temple, the Nehru Memorial Library in Delhi, the Peshawar University Library, the Allama Iqbal University Library in Srinagar, the British Library, the School of Oriental and African Studies Library in London, the National Art Library at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the National Archives at Kew, the John Murray Archive (then in London, now in Edinburgh), the National Library of Scotland, the University Library in Cambridge and the Ancient India and Iran Trust Library in Cambridge. Particular thanks to Rigmor Båtsvik of the Bodleian Library, Oxford University.
Several kind people read the book at various stages. I am particularly grateful to my mother, my brother Jack, S. Gautham and Tahmima Anam for their annotations and observations. Daniel Wilson, Naomi Goulder, Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, Jenny Bangham, Syed Mazhar Zaidi, Farjad Nabi and Patrick French also commented on individual chapters. During the publishing process, I was much obliged to Rowan Yapp, Howard Davies, Thomas Abraham and Sophie Hoult for their help. Along the way, the houses of friends provided writing space; thanks especially to Charlotte Brodie in Edinburgh; Debjani Sengupta and Ritwik Saha in Delhi; and John, Louise and Rose Dargue in Dufton.
From the time that I lived in Delhi and throughout my travels along the River Indus, this book has been influenced in different ways by the conversations, notions or writings of certain people: above all Shuddhabrata Sengupta; Kai Friese; Usman Qazi (for which I have to thank Rustom Vania, one-time neighbour and colleague in Delhi); Declan Walsh, ebullient host; and the exact, encyclopaedic Irfan Khan. Nothing would have been possible without Tristram Stuart, this book’s first editor and my own true love.
Finally, while several people I know were born during the writing of this book, I also lost some friends. Mr Bazmi, son of the Sheedi author Mussafir, died of a brain tumour on 22 April 2007. Nausheen Jaffery, whom I have known since we were teenagers when she took me to Gandhi’s memorial and the Jama Masjid, died in 2004, aged 32.
My father died many years before this book was even dreamt of, and it is dedicated to him.
* In some parts of the subcontinent the parrot is proverbially a wise bird (and the owl dim-witted).
* Language of the earliest extant Buddhist scriptures in India
Empires of the Indus Page 45