India Through the Ages: A Popular and Picturesque History of Hindustan — Key Ideas to Explore

A Compiler's Voice and the Problem of Sources

Steel is upfront about her method: the preface states the book “claims to hold no original research, but simply to be a compilation of the work of others.” Yet the excerpts show her making interpretive choices. When discussing the death of Birbal, Akbar's friend, she speculates that the historian Abul-fazl gave a “confused and contradictory account” because he knew Birbal was acting on the king's orders. This is not a neutral summary; it is a novelist's inference about motive. Similarly, she describes Akbar and Birbal as “both keenly interested in the answer to the Great Riddle of Life, the one Agnostic, the other hopeless Optimist.” The language is vivid and personal, not the dry tone of an academic history. Readers should note that Steel's “picturesque” approach means she often fills gaps with plausible emotion rather than documented fact.

The First English Travellers and a Turning Point

A striking passage recounts the arrival in 1585 of three Englishmen—John Newberie, Ralph Fitch, and William Leedes—with a letter from Queen Elizabeth to “Yellabdin Echebar, King of Cambaya.” Steel reproduces the letter in full, with its ornate phrasing: “the great affection which our subjects have to visit the most distant places of the world.” She notes that Akbar gave them safe conduct, and that Fitch's report later helped “start the first British venture to the East.” This moment is framed as “the first touch of England on India,” occurring when the Moghul dynasty was at its height. The episode is not central to the book's overall arc, but Steel gives it weight, suggesting she sees it as a harbinger. The excerpts do not reveal how she treats later British involvement, but this scene is clearly meant to resonate with her early 20th-century audience.

The Texture of the Ancient Age: Hymns, Rivers, and Epics

The table of contents shows that Part I covers the “Ancient Age,” beginning with “Earliest hymns,” “The Black people,” and “The White people.” Steel's chapter titles promise a survey of Vedic times, the two great epics (Mâhâbhârata and Râmâyana), and the “marvellous millennium” of the Ûpanishads and Buddha. The excerpts do not include these early chapters, so we cannot assess how she handles the Rig-Veda or the story of Bhishma. However, the preface's note on pronunciation suggests she expects readers to encounter unfamiliar names. The list of maps—from “India to B.C. 231” to “India at the Present Day”—indicates a chronological scope that matches the catalog subject “India -- History.” Steel's approach is to compress millennia into vivid snapshots, relying on secondary sources and her own narrative instincts.

Akbar's Court: Loss and Legend

The longest excerpt focuses on Akbar's grief after Birbal's death in battle. Steel writes that the emperor was “inconsolable for the loss of his friend—his greatest friend—who had known his every thought.” She reports a rumour that the two men had agreed to return to each other after death, and that Akbar eagerly credited sightings of Birbal alive. The passage ends with a somber note: “a cloud seems to fall over the gorgeous pageant of Akbar's royalty” after he abandoned Fatehpur Sikri. This is characteristic of Steel's method: she uses a personal tragedy to mark a turning point in imperial history. The detail about the “flitting bats” and “prowling hyenas” in the abandoned city is pure atmosphere. Readers should be aware that such colour is Steel's addition, not necessarily found in her sources.

Steel's history is best approached as a work of popular synthesis from the Edwardian era, shaped by a novelist's interest in character and scene. The excerpts show her willingness to infer motives and emotions, especially around figures like Akbar and Birbal. Readers who want a strict chronology or critical apparatus will need to supplement this with modern scholarship. But for those interested in how a British writer of the period constructed a “picturesque” narrative of India's past, the book offers a revealing example of its genre.

Reading about Akbar’s court, I remembered sitting on my grandmother’s porch, turning pages of Indians of the Mesa Verde — Edition Insights. Both books feel like old photographs—slightly faded, yet vivid in their silences. Steel’s emperors and the cliff dwellers share a quiet weight, a sense of lives fully lived beneath vast, indifferent skies. That ache of distance, of almost-touching the past, stayed with me long after closing either cover.