13.  See the 105th chapter of the Koran.  ’Hast thou not seen how thy Lord dealt with the masters of the elephant?  Did he not make their treacherous design an occasion of drawing them into error; and send against them flocks of swallows which cast down upon them stones of baked clay, and rendered them like the leaves of corn eaten by cattle?’ [W.  H. S.] The quotation is from Sale’s translation, but Sale uses the word ‘birds’, and not ‘swallows’.  In his note, where he tells the whole story, he speaks of ’a large flock of birds like swallows’.  The Arabic, Persian, and Hindustani dictionaries give no other word than ‘ababil’ for swallow.  The word ‘partadil’ (purtadeel) occurs in none of them.  According to Oates, Fauna of British India (London, 1890), the ‘ababil’ is the common swallow, Hirundo rustica; and the ‘mosque-swallow’ (’masjid-ababil’), otherwise called ‘Sykes’s striated swallow’, is the H. erythropygia, H. Daurica of Balfour, Cyclop. of India, 3rd ed., s.v.  Hirundinidae.  This latter species is the ‘little piebald thing’ mentioned by the author.

14.  Muh.  Latif (Agra, pp. 146, 147) gives the text and English rendering of the inscription, which is in Persian, except the logion ascribed to Jesus, which is in Arabic.  His translation of the Jesus saying is as follows: 

’So said Jeans, on whom be peace!  “The world is a bridge; pass over it, but build no house on it.  He who reflected on the distresses of the Day of Judgement gained pleasure everlasting.

’"Worldly pleasures are but momentary; spend, then, thy life in devotion and remember that what remains of it is valueless".’

Like the author, I am unable to trace the source of the quotation.  The inscription probably was recorded after Akbar’s breach with Islam, which may be dated from 1579 or 1580.  When he built the mosque, in 1571-5, he was still a devout Musalman, although entertaining liberal opinions.  He died on October 25, 1605 (N.S.; October 15, O.S.)

15.  For a full account of the exquisite sepulchre of Shaikh Salim, see E. W. Smith, op. cit..  Part III, chap. ii.  An inscription over the doorway is dated A.H. 979 = 1571-2, the year of the saint’s death.  The building, constructed regardless of expense, must be somewhat later.  ’As originally built by Akbar, the tomb was of red sandstone, and the marble trellis-work, the chief ornament of the tomb, was erected subsequently by the Emperor Jahangir’ (Latif, Agra, p. 144).

16.  The first plundering of Akbar’s tomb at Sikandra by the Jats occurred in 1691 according to Manucci (ante, chapter 51, note 29.).  The outrages at Fathpur-Sikri seem to have been later in date, and to have happened after the capture of Agra in 1761 by Suraj Mall, the famous Raja of Bhurtpore (Bharatpur).  The Jats retained possession of Agra until 1774 (I.G., 1908, vol. viii, p. 76).  That is the period while they reigned, to use the author’s words.  Tradition affirms that daring that time they shot away the tops of the minarets at the entrance to the Sikandra park; took the armour and books of Akbar from his tomb, and sent them to Bharatpur, and also melted down two silver doors at the Taj, which had cost Shah Jahan more than 125,000 rupees (N.W.P.  Gazetteer, 1st ed., vol. vii, p. 619)