MPSC 2026 Prelims Paper-I · Question 5 of 100

Correct — option (2): (a)-(ii), (b)-(i), (c)-(iii), (d)-(iv). Storia do Mogor is the work of Niccolao Manucci, the Venetian who reached India as a teenager in the 1650s, served as an artilleryman in Dara Shukoh's camp and later practised as a physician, and who spent decades assembling a sprawling account of the later years of Shah Jahan and the reign of Aurangzeb — written in a mixture of Italian, French and Portuguese, and later translated into English by William Irvine. Travels in the Mughal Empire is by François Bernier, printed in this booklet as 'Burnier', the French physician who was in India between 1656 and 1668 and attached himself to the noble Danishmand Khan; his book is the source of the famous and much-debated argument that there was no private property in land in Mughal India, and of the comparisons between Indian and European cities that generations of historians have argued with. Early Travels in India is the collection edited by William Foster — and this is the pair that catches candidates, because Foster is not a traveller at all but a modern editor, who gathered the narratives of the English visitors of the years around 1600, among them Ralph Fitch, William Hawkins, William Finch, Thomas Coryat and Edward Terry, and published them as a single volume. Historical Fragments of the Mogul Empire, printed here in the shortened form 'Historical Fragment' and credited only to the bare forename 'Robert', is the work of Robert Orme, the eighteenth-century historian of the East India Company. Two fixed pairs settle the item without needing the third or fourth. Attach Storia do Mogor to Manucci and options (3) and (4) die at once, since they send it to Foster and to Bernier respectively. Then attach Travels in the Mughal Empire to Bernier: option (1) gives that book to Foster, so it falls, and option (2) is left standing alone.

• (1)(a) - (ii), (b) - (iii), (c) - (i), (d) - (iv) — The strongest distractor on the item, because it gets both the first and the last pair right — Storia do Mogor to Manucci, Historical Fragments to Robert Orme — and then swaps the middle two. It hands Travels in the Mughal Empire to William Foster and Early Travels in India to Bernier, which is exactly backwards. Bernier wrote one book, from his own eight years in India; Foster wrote none of the travels but edited the English narratives of an earlier generation into a collection. The distinction between a traveller and an editor of travellers is the single fact this option is testing, and it is worth carrying because the same pair of names recurs in this area across papers.
• (3)(a) - (iii), (b) - (ii), (c) - (iv), (d) - (i) — Every pair displaced. Storia do Mogor goes to William Foster, Travels in the Mughal Empire to Manucci, Early Travels in India to Robert Orme and Historical Fragments to Bernier. The first pair alone retires it: Storia do Mogor is the most securely attributed of the four titles, a work whose authorship is inseparable from Manucci's own extraordinary biography as an artilleryman turned physician who never went home. When an option displaces the pair you are surest of, there is no need to check the remaining three — a matching item is all or nothing, and one certain mismatch is fatal.
• (4)(a) - (i), (b) - (iii), (c) - (ii), (d) - (iv) — Gets only the last pair right. It gives Storia do Mogor to Bernier, Travels in the Mughal Empire to Foster and Early Travels in India to Manucci, leaving Historical Fragments correctly with Robert Orme. The chain of errors starts from a single confusion — treating Bernier and Manucci as interchangeable because both were Europeans at Aurangzeb's court in the same decades — and a candidate who separates them by profession and nationality will not make it: Bernier was a French physician who published his own travels soon after returning to Europe, Manucci a Venetian adventurer whose vast manuscript was not printed in English until long after his death.

European accounts of Mughal India are examined as a fixed roster, and the profitable way to hold them is by nationality, by the reign each writer saw and by the one argument or detail each is remembered for. The seventeenth-century group is the core: François Bernier, French physician, in India 1656–68, attached to Danishmand Khan, author of Travels in the Mughal Empire and of the claim that the emperor was the sole proprietor of the soil; Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, French jeweller, six voyages, remembered for his descriptions of the diamond mines and the court's gems; Niccolao Manucci, Venetian, artilleryman turned physician, author of the Storia do Mogor covering Shah Jahan's last years and Aurangzeb's reign; and Jean de Thévenot and the Dutch and Portuguese writers around them. The English group of the previous generation — Ralph Fitch, William Hawkins, Sir Thomas Roe, William Finch, Thomas Coryat and Edward Terry — belongs to Akbar's and Jahangir's reigns, and several of their narratives were collected in the modern era by the editor William Foster. Alongside them sit the later historians of the Company period, of whom Robert Orme is the standard example, writing history rather than travel.

Two habits decide this question. The first is separating a traveller from an editor. Every other name in the (i)-(iv) column belongs to someone who was physically in India and wrote what he saw; William Foster belongs to someone who worked in the India Office archives and assembled other men's narratives centuries later. Questions in this area lean on that distinction repeatedly, because it is invisible to a candidate who has learnt the titles as a flat list. The second habit is the elimination discipline that any four-pair matching item permits: fix the pair you are surest of, delete every option that contradicts it, and only then look at a second pair. Here two pairs are enough, and the two easiest ones will do. It is also worth reading this stem for what it reveals about the booklet's proofing. The French traveller is printed 'Burnier', Manucci appears as 'Niccolao Manucchi', the title is shortened to 'Historical Fragment', and Robert Orme is reduced to the bare forename 'Robert'. None of these prevented the item from being answerable, since each name is still recognisable, but they are a reminder that on this paper you are matching against approximate spellings and should identify by shape rather than by exact orthography.

• Niccolao Manucci, a Venetian who arrived in India in the 1650s, served as an artilleryman with Dara Shukoh and later worked as a physician; his Storia do Mogor, written in a mixture of Italian, French and Portuguese, covers the later years of Shah Jahan and the reign of Aurangzeb and was translated into English by William Irvine.
• François Bernier was a French physician in India between 1656 and 1668, attached to the noble Danishmand Khan; his Travels in the Mughal Empire argued that there was no private property in land in India and that the emperor was the sole proprietor of the soil, a claim historians have contested ever since.
• William Foster was not a traveller but a modern editor who collected the narratives of English visitors to India of the years around 1600 — among them Ralph Fitch, William Hawkins, William Finch, Thomas Coryat and Edward Terry — in the volume Early Travels in India.
• Historical Fragments of the Mogul Empire is the work of Robert Orme, the eighteenth-century historian of the East India Company, who also wrote a history of British military transactions in India; the booklet prints only his forename.
• The other standard European accounts of the Mughal period are Jean-Baptiste Tavernier's, by a French jeweller who made six voyages and described the diamond mines and the court's gems, and Sir Thomas Roe's, by James I's ambassador to Jahangir's court from 1615.

• Treating William Foster as a traveller — he is a modern editor who collected other men's narratives, and this single confusion is what the strongest distractor on this item is built from
• Interchanging Bernier and Manucci because both were Europeans at Aurangzeb's court in the same decades; separate them by nationality and profession, a French physician who published his own travels and a Venetian adventurer whose manuscript appeared in English long after his death
• Expecting exact spellings: this booklet prints 'Burnier', 'Niccolao Manucchi', 'Historical Fragment' and a bare 'Robert', so recognise the name by shape rather than by orthography
• Reading all four permutations in full instead of fixing one certain pair and deleting the options that contradict it

MPSC asks European accounts as a four-pair matching item, drawing on a small pool of traveller-and-title pairs that appears again and again across editions, and it will happily include an editor or a later historian in the column to see whether the candidate has learnt names or has learnt people. UPSC asks the same material for content and use: which traveller described a named practice, what a particular account can be relied on as evidence for, or a statement pair testing whether a writer visited the reign he is credited with. The shared core is the roster; the difference is that MPSC needs the title attached to the name and UPSC needs one substantive claim attached to the book. Carry both, because the roster is short enough that the extra sentence per traveller costs very little and answers either examiner.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The French physician who was attached to the Mughal noble Danishmand Khan and who argued in his account that the emperor was the sole proprietor of all land in India was :

  • (a)Jean-Baptiste Tavernier
  • (b)François Bernier
  • (c)Jean de Thévenot
  • (d)Niccolao Manucci

  Answer(b) François Bernier — a physician in India from 1656 to 1668 who attached himself to Danishmand Khan, and whose Travels in the Mughal Empire advanced the claim that there was no private property in land, a proposition later historians have disputed at length. Tavernier was a jeweller who described the diamond mines, and Manucci was the Venetian author of the Storia do Mogor.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The volume Early Travels in India, which collects the narratives of English visitors such as Ralph Fitch, William Hawkins and Edward Terry, was compiled by which of the following ?

  • (a)William Foster
  • (b)William Irvine
  • (c)Robert Orme
  • (d)Henry Miers Elliot

  Answer(a) William Foster — an editor rather than a traveller, who gathered the accounts of the English visitors of the years around 1600 into a single collection. William Irvine translated Manucci's Storia do Mogor into English, Robert Orme wrote Historical Fragments of the Mogul Empire, and Elliot is associated with the multi-volume translation series of Persian histories of India.