Khan, Munshi Adalat

Khan, Munshi Adalat (1834-1894) linguist, writer, and Munshi of fort william college. He was born in 1834 at village Dadrokhi in manikganj district. His father, Zulfiqar Khan was a librarian at the Oriental Section of Fort William College. Adalat Khan studied at Calcutta Madrasa and Presidency College. He passed the Higher Textbook examination and joined as Munshi of the Board of Examiners of Fort William College in 1862. He used to teach Persian and Hindi to the civil and military officers in the college. He earned reputation as a teacher and a writer. He was well reputed for his erudition not only in India, but in far off Europe. The Lieutenant governor of Bengal issued a testimonial recognising his erudition.

Apart from teaching, Adalat Khan also wrote textbooks and compiled dictionaries. Most of his textbooks were the translation into English from brajabuli, Persian, Bangla, Hindi, Urdu, and Arabic. His multi-lingual dictionaries include a triangual dictionary (Hindi, Persian and Bangla, 1872) and a pentalingual dictionary (Bangla, English, Persian, Urdu and Hindi, 1880). He translated into English Vidyasagar';s vetalapanchavingshati (1864), Bosta (1868), Tulsi Das';s R'a'm'a'yana (1872), Prems'a'gar, B'a'g O B'a'h'a'r (1875), Bharatbarsher Itihas (1877), Gulist'a'n (1880), Iqd-e-Gul (1883), Gule Bak'a'wal'i, Tota K'a'hin'i, Bahar-i-Danish, Alif Laila and Chahar Darwash. These writings display his mastery over the languages of India and Iran and his extraordinary erudition in history, geography, puranas, ethnology and theology. [Badiuzzaman] [Badiuzzaman  former Deputy Director, Bangla Academy, Dhaka]