He seemingly benefited from the census of the province of Punjab conducted in 1892 by another civil servants of the Raj. At the same time, he also consulted the 1892 All India census conducted H.A. Rose, Superintendent of Census, Government of India, who compiled it and first published it in 1911.
At several places British author E.D. MacLagan seems to have used excerpts from the works of Sir Denizel Ibsten to which he made several changes and put in some additions.
Translator Yasir Javvad has stated that during the course of translation of this volume, he did some editing in the original manuscript because a number of administrative units of the Punjab. especially its princely states of yore had been separated from the original boundaries of the Punjab. He has taken special care in writing about those castes and sub-castes currently living with the boundaries of the Punjab (and NWFP), which are now acknowledged as parts of East and West Punjab.
The dictionary defines an encyclopaedia as a book or a set of books, which deals with every branch of knowledge, or with one particular branch, as is the case with the book under review, in an alphabetical order. A dictionary explains words and an encyclopaedia explains facts.
Translation of a text from one language into another is not an easy task. Seemingly Yasir Javvad had to put in a lot of hard work in completing his job of translation of the old English book, which is evident from the good quality of his translation. He also faced difficulties in putting in about two and a half thousand castes and tribes in an Urdu alphabetical order, which, given the limitations of an Urdu keyboard of modern computer, is quite a difficult and tiresome job. Doubtless, it was an uphill task with which he has acquitted himself well.
The book under review provides a wealth of information for the scholars and researchers about various tribes, their origins and customs, which has now been made available at a reasonable price, courtesy Book Home, which has produced and marketed the Urdu translation of the original work. The readers will be pleasantly surprised to find so much information in much details about a large number of tribes, castes and sub-castes among the Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims, who currently live in the vastness of both parts of the Punjab, and NWFP. For example, one can get a lot of information about the Baloch living in the Punjab (p. 65) Jaats (p. 136) Cheemas (201) Sattis (256) Kapurs (302), Khokhars (342) and Marwwat (403).
The British author of the original book seemed to have spent much time and put in hard work in collecting, scanning and verifying this information from different sources and in meticulously placing it in the three volumes, one of which (under review) has been admirably translated by Yasir Javvad.
Students and researchers of Punjabi language and literature, customs and culture, will find the Urdu version of the original book of tremendous value. As the original English version of the three -volumes is not easily available, both public and private libraries, especially' those attached with colleges and universities ought to equip themselves with copies of the newly published Urdu version of the Glossary of the Tribes and Castes of the Punjab and North-West Province by E.D. MacLagan and H.A. Rose.
Name of the book: Zaaton ka Encyclopaedia
Name of the translator: Yasir Javvad
Name of the publisher: Rana Abdur Rehman Book Home, 46 Mozang Road, Lahore
Pages: 462
Price: Rs 430