Introductory.

This book is a translation of Babur Padshah’s Autobiography, made from the original Turki text. It was undertaken after a purely-Turki manuscript had become accessible in England, the Haidarabad Codex (1915) which, being in Babur’s ipsissima verba, left to him the control of his translator’s diction—a control that had been impracticable from the time when, under Akbar (1589), his book was translated into Persian. What has come down to us of pure text is, in its shrunken amount, what was translated in 1589. It is difficult, here and there, to interpret owing to its numerous and in some places extensive lacunÆ, and presents more problems than one the solution of which has real importance because they have favoured suggestions of malfeasance by Babur.

My translation has been produced under considerable drawback, having been issued in four fasciculi, at long intervals, respectively in June 1912, May 1914, October 1917, and September 1921. I have put with it of supplementary matter what may be of service to those readers whom Babur’s personality attracts and to those who study Turki as a linguistic entertainment, but owing to delays in production am unable to include the desiderata of maps.

Chapter I.
BABUR’S EXEMPLARS IN THE ARTS OF PEACE.

Babur’s civilian aptitudes, whether of the author and penman, the maker of gardens, the artist, craftsman or sportsman, were nourished in a fertile soil of family tradition and example. Little about his teaching and training is now with his mutilated book, little indeed of[Pg xxviii] any kind about his prÆ-accession years, not the date of his birth even, having escaped destruction.4 Happily Haidar Mirza (q.v.) possessed a more complete Codex than has come down to us through the Timurid libraries, and from it he translated many episodes of Baburiana that help to bridge gaps and are of special service here where the personalities of Babur’s early environment are being named.

Babur’s home-milieu favoured excellence in the quiet Arts and set before its children high standard and example of proficiency. Moreover, by schooling him in obedience to the Law, it planted in him some of Art’s essentials, self-restraint and close attention. Amongst primal influences on him, his mother Qut-luq-nigar’s ranked high; she, well-born and a scholar’s daughter, would certainly be educated in Turki and Persian and in the home-accomplishments her governess possessed (atun q.v.). From her and her mother Aisan-daulat, the child would learn respect for the attainments of his wise old grandfather Yunas Khan. Aisan-daulat herself brought to her grandson much that goes to the making of a man; nomad-born and sternly-bred, she was brave to obey her opinion of right, and was practically the boy’s ruling counsellor through his early struggle to hold Farghana. With these two in fine influence must be counted Khan-zada, his five-years elder sister who from his birth to his death proved her devotion to him. Her life-story tempts, but is too long to tell; her girlish promise is seen fulfilled in Gul-badan’s pages. ‘Umar Shaikh’s own mother Shah Sultan Begim brought in a type of merit widely differing from that of Aisan-daulat Begim; as a town-lady of high Tarkhan birth, used to the amenities of life in a wealthy house of Samarkand, she was, doubtless, an accomplished and cultured woman.

‘Umar Shaikh’s environment was dominated for many years by two great men, the scholar and lover of town-life Yunas Khan and the saintly Ahrari (i.e. Khwaja ‘Ubaidu’l-lah) who were frequently with him in company, came at Babur’s birth and assisted at his naming. Ahrari died in 895-1491 when the child was about seven years old but his influence was life-long; in 935-1529 he was invoked as a spiritual helper by the fever-stricken Babur and his mediation believed efficacious for recovery (pp. 619, 648). For the babe or boy to be where the three friends held social session in high converse, would be thought to draw blessing on him; his hushed silence in the presence would sow the seed of reverence for wisdom and virtue, such, for example, as he felt for Jami (q.v.). It is worth while to tell some part at least of Yunas’ attainments in the gentler Arts, because the biography from which they are quoted may well have been written on the information of his wife Aisan-daulat, and it indicates the breadth of his exemplary influence. Yunas was many things—penman, painter, singer, instrumentalist, and a past master in the crafts. He was an expert in good companionship, having even temper and perfect manners, quick perception and conversational charm. His intellectual distinction was attributed to his twelve years of wardship under the learned and highly honoured Yazdi (Sharafu’d-din ’Ali), the author of the Zafar-nama [Timur’s Book of Victory]. That book was in hand during four years of Yunas’ education; he will thus have known it and its main basis Timur’s Turki Malfuzat (annals). What he learned of either book he would carry with him into ‘Umar Shaikh’s environment, thus magnifying the family stock of Timuriya influence. He lived to be some 74 years old, a length of days which fairly bridged the gap between Timur’s death [807-1404] and Babur’s birth (888-1483). It is said that no previous Khan of his (Chaghatai) line had survived his 40th year; his exceptional age earned him great respect and would deepen his influence on his restless young son-in-law ‘Umar Shaikh. It appears to have been in ‘Umar’s 20th year (cir.) that Yunas Khan began the friendly association with him that lasted till Yunas’ death (892-1483), a friendship which, as disparate ages would dictate, was rather that of father and son than of equal companionship. One matter mentioned in the Khan’s biography would come to Babur’s remembrance in the future days when he, like Yunas, broke the Law against intoxicants and, like him, repented and returned.

That two men of the calibre and high repute of Ahrari and Yunas maintained friendly guidance so long over ‘Umar cannot but be held an accreditment and give fragrance of goodness to his name. Apart from the high justice and generosity his son ascribes to him, he could set other example, for he was a reader of great books, the Qoran and the Masnawi being amongst his favourites. This choice, it may be, led Abu’l-fa?l to say he had the darwesh-mind. Babur was old enough before ‘Umar’s death to profit by the sight of his father enjoying the perusal of such books. As with other parents and other children, there would follow the happy stilling to a quiet mood, the piquing of curiosity as to what was in the book, the sight of refuge taken as in a haven from self and care, and perhaps, Babur being intelligent and of inquiring mind and ‘Umar a skilled reciter, the boy would marvel at the perennial miracle that a lifeless page can become eloquent—gentle hints all, pointers of the way to literary creation.

Few who are at home in Baburiana but will take Timur as Babur’s great exemplar not only as a soldier but as a chronicler. Timur cannot have seemed remote from that group of people so well-informed about him and his civilian doings; his Shahrukhi grandchildren in Samarkand had carried on his author-tradition; the 74 years of Yunas Khan’s life had bridged the gap between Timur’s death in 807-1405 and Babur’s birth in 888-1483. To Babur Timur will have been exemplary through his grandson Aulugh Beg who has two productions to his credit, the Char-ulus (Four Hordes) and the Kurkani Astronomical Tables. His sons, again, Babur (qalandar) and Ibrahim carried on the family torch of letters, the first in verse and the second by initiating and fostering Yazdi’s labours on the Zafar-nama. Wide-radiating and potent influence for the Arts of Peace came forth from Herat during the reign of that Sultan Husain Mirza whose Court Babur describes in one of the best supplements to his autobiography. Husain was a Timurid of the elder branch of Bai-qara, an author himself but far more effective as a MacÆnas; one man of the shining galaxy of competence that gave him fame, set pertinent example for Babur the author, namely, the Andijani of noble Chaghatai family, ’Ali-sher Nawa’i who, in classic Turki verse was the master Babur was to become in its prose. That the standard of effort was high in Herat is clear from Babur’s dictum (p. 233) that whatever work a man took up, he aspired to bring it to perfection. Elphinstone varies the same theme to the tune of equality of excellence apart from social status, writing to Erskine (August, 1826), that “it gives a high notion of the time to find” (in Babur’s account of Husain’s Court) “artists, musicians and others, described along with the learned and great of the Age”.

My meagre summary of Babur’s exemplars would be noticeably incomplete if it omitted mention of two of his life-long helpers in the gentler Arts, his love of Nature and his admiration for great architectural creations. The first makes joyous accompaniment throughout his book; the second is specially called forth by Timur’s ennoblement of Samarkand. Timur had built magnificently and laid out stately gardens; Babur made many a fruitful pleasaunce and gladdened many an arid halting-place; he built a little, but had small chance to test his capacity for building greatly; never rich, he was poor in Kabul and several times destitute in his home-lands. But his sword won what gave wealth to his Indian Dynasty, and he passed on to it the builder’s unused dower, so that Samarkand was surpassed in Hindustan and the spiritual conception Timur’s creations embodied took perfect form at Sikandra where Akbar lies entombed.

Chapter II.
PROBLEMS OF THE MUTILATED BABUR-NAMA.

Losses from the text of Babur’s book are the more disastrous because it truly embodies his career. For it has the rare distinction of being contemporary with the events it describes, is boyish in his boyhood, grows with his growth, matures as he matured. Undulled by retrospect, it is a fresh and spontaneous recital of things just seen, heard or done. It has the further rare distinction of shewing a boy who, setting a future task before him—in his case the revival of Timurid power,—began to chronicle his adventure in the book which through some 37 years was his twinned comrade, which by its special distinctions has attracted readers for nearly a half-millennium, still attracts and still is a thing apart from autobiographies which look back to recall dead years.

Much circumstance makes for the opinion that Babur left his life-record complete, perhaps repaired in places and recently supplemented, but continuous, orderly and lucid; this it is not now, nor has been since it was translated into Persian in 1589, for it is fissured by lacunÆ, has neither Preface nor Epilogue,5 opens in an oddly abrupt and incongruous fashion, and consists of a series of fragments so disconnected as to demand considerable preliminary explanation. Needless to say, its dwindled condition notwithstanding, it has place amongst great autobiographies, still revealing its author playing a man’s part in a drama of much historic and personal interest. Its revelation is however now like a portrait out of drawing, because it has not kept the record of certain years of his manhood in which he took momentous decisions,(1) those of 1511-12 [918] in which he accepted reinforcement—at a great price—from Isma‘il the Shi‘a Shah of Persia, and in which, if my reading be correct, he first (1512) broke the Law against the use of wine,6 (2) those of 1519-1525 [926-932], in which his literary occupations with orthodox Law (see Mubin) associated with cognate matters of 932 AH. indicate that his return to obedience had begun, in which too was taken the decision that worked out for his fifth expedition across the Indus with its sequel of the conquest of Hind.—The loss of matter so weighty cannot but destroy the balance of his record and falsify the drawing of his portrait.

a. Problem of Titles.

As nothing survives to decide what was Babur’s chosen title for his autobiography, a modern assignment of names to distinguish it [Pg xxxiii]from its various descendants is desirable, particularly so since the revival of interest in it towards which the Facsimile of its Haidarabad Codex has contributed.7

Babur-nama (History of Babur) is a well-warranted name by which to distinguish the original Turki text, because long associated with this and rarely if ever applied to its Persian translation.8 It is not comprehensive because not covering supplementary matter of biography and description but it has use for modern readers of classing Babur’s with other Timuriya and Timurid histories such as the Zafar-Humayun-Akbar-namas.

Waqi‘at-i-baburi (Babur’s Acts), being descriptive of the book and in common use for naming both the Turki and Persian texts, might usefully be reserved as a title for the latter alone.

Amongst European versions of the book Memoirs of Baber is Erskine’s peculium for the Leyden and Erskine Perso-English translation—MÉmoires de Baber is Pavet de Courteille’s title for his French version of the Bukhara [Persified-Turki] compilation—Babur-nama in English links the translation these volumes contain with its purely-Turki source.

b. Problems of the Constituents of the Books.

Intact or mutilated, Babur’s material falls naturally into three territorial divisions, those of the lands of his successive rule, Farghana (with Samarkand), Kabul and Hindustan. With these are distinct sub-sections of description of places and of obituaries of kinsmen.

The book might be described as consisting of annals and diary, which once met within what is now the gap of 1508-19 (914-925). Round this gap, amongst others, bristle problems of which this change of literary style is one; some are small and concern the mutilation alone, others are larger, but all are too intricate for terse statement and all might be resolved by the help of a second MS. e.g. one of the same strain as Haidar’s.

Without fantasy another constituent might be counted in with the three territorial divisions, namely, the grouped lacunÆ which by their engulfment of text are an untoward factor in an estimate either of Babur or of his book. They are actually the cardinal difficulty of the book as it now is; they foreshorten purview of his career and character and detract from its merits; they lose it perspective and distort its proportions. That this must be so is clear both from the value and the preponderating amount of the lost text. It is no exaggeration to say that while working on what survives, what is lost becomes like a haunting presence warning that it must be remembered always as an integral and the dominant part of the book.

The relative proportions of saved and lost text are highly significant:—Babur’s commemorable years are about 47 and 10 months, i.e. from his birth on Feb. 14th 1483 to near his death on Dec. 26th 1530; but the aggregate of surviving text records some 18 years only, and this not continuously but broken through by numerous gaps. That these gaps result from loss of pages is frequently shewn by a broken sentence, an unfinished episode. The fragments—as they truly may be called—are divided by gaps sometimes seeming to remove a few pages only (cf. s.a. 935 AH.), sometimes losing the record of 6 and cir. 18 months, sometimes of 6 and 11 years; besides these actual clefts in the narrative there are losses of some 12 years from its beginning and some 16 months from its end. Briefly put we now have the record of cir. 18 years where that of over 47 could have been.9

c. Causes of the gaps.

Various causes have been surmised to explain the lacunÆ; on the plea of long intimacy with Babur’s and Haidar’s writings, I venture to say that one and all appear to me the result of accident. This opinion rests on observed correlations between the surviving and the lost record, which demand complement—on the testimony of Haidar’s extracts, and firmly on Babur’s orderly and persistent bias of mind and on the prideful character of much of the lost record. Moreover occasions of risk to Babur’s papers are known.

Of these occasions the first was the destruction of his camp near Hisar in 1512 (918; p. 357) but no information about his papers survives; they may not have been in his tent but in the fort. The second was a case of recorded damage to “book and sections” (p. 679) occurring in 1529 (935). From signs of work done to the Farghana section in Hindustan, the damage may be understood made good at the later date. To the third exposure to damage, namely, the attrition of hard travel and unsettled life during Humayun’s 14 years of exile from rule in Hindustan (1441-1555) it is reasonable to attribute even the whole loss of text. For, assuming—as may well be done—that Babur left (1530) a complete autobiography, its volume would be safe so long as Humayun was in power but after the Timurid exodus (1441) his library would be exposed to the risks detailed in the admirable chronicles of Gul-badan, Jauhar and Bayazid (q.v.). He is known to have annotated his father’s book in 1555 (p. 466 n. 1) just before marching from Kabul to attempt the re-conquest of Hindustan. His Codex would return to Dihli which he entered in July 1555, and there would be safe from risk of further mutilation. Its condition in 1555 is likely to have remained what it was found when ‘Abdu’r-rahim translated it into Persian by Akbar’s orders (1589) for Abu’l-fa?l’s use in the Akbar-nama. That Persian translation with its descendant the Memoirs of Baber, and the purely-Turki Haidarabad Codex with its descendant the Babur-nama in English, contain identical contents and, so doing, carry the date of the mutilation of Babur’s Turki text back through its years of safety, 1589 to 1555, to the period of Humayun’s exile and its dangers for camel-borne or deserted libraries.

d. Two misinterpretations of lacunÆ.

Not unnaturally the frequent interruptions of narrative caused by lacunÆ have been misinterpreted occasionally, and sometimes detractory comment has followed on Babur, ranking him below the accomplished and lettered, steadfast and honest man he was. I select two examples of this comment neither of which has a casual origin.

The first is from the B.M. Cat. of Coins of the Shahs of Persia p. xxiv, where after identifying a certain gold coin as shewing vassalage by Babur to Isma‘il Safawi, the compiler of the Catalogue notes, “We can now understand the omission from Babar’s ‘Memoirs’ of the occurrences between 914 H. and 925 H.” Can these words imply other than that Babur suppressed mention of minting of the coins shewing acknowledgment of Shi‘a suzerainty? Leaving aside the delicate topic of the detraction the quoted words imply, much negatives the surmise that the gap is a deliberate “omission” of text:—(1) the duration of the Shi‘a alliance was 19-20 months of 917-918 AH. (p. 355), why omit the peaceful or prideful and victorious record of some 9-10 years on its either verge? (2) Babur’s Transoxus campaign was an episode in the struggle between Shaibaq Khan (Shaibani) Auzbeg and Shah Isma‘il—between Sunni and Shi‘a; how could “omission” from his book, always a rare one, hide what multitudes knew already? “Omission” would have proved a fiasco in another region than Central Asia, because the Babur-Haidar story of the campaign, vassal-coinage included,10 has been brought into English literature by the English translation of the Tarikh-i rashidi. Babur’s frank and self-judging habit of mind would, I think, lead him to write fully of the difficulties which compelled the hated alliance and certainly he would tell of his own anger at the conduct of the campaign by Isma‘il’s Commanders. The alliance was a tactical mistake; it would have served Babur better to narrate its failure.

The second misinterpretation, perhaps a mere surmising gloss, is Erskine’s (Memoirs Supp. p. 289) who, in connection with ‘Alam Khan’s request to Babur for reinforcement in order to oust his nephew Ibrahim, observes that “Babur probably flattered ‘Alam Khan with the hope of succession to the empire of Hindustan.” This idea does not fit the record of either man. Elphinstone was angered by Erskine’s remark which, he wrote (Aug. 26th 1826) “had a bad [Pg xxxvii]effect on the narrative by weakening the implicit confidence in Babur’s candour and veracity which his frank way of writing is so well-calculated to command.” Elphinstone’s opinion of Babur is not that of a reader but of a student of his book; he was also one of Erskine’s staunchest helpers in its production. From Erskine’s surmise others have advanced on the detractor’s path saying that Babur used and threw over ‘Alam Khan (q.v.).

e. Reconstruction.

Amongst the problems mutilation has created an important one is that of the condition of the beginning of the book (p. 1 to p. 30) with its plunge into Babur’s doings in his 12th year without previous mention of even his day and place of birth, the names and status of his parents, or any occurrences of his prÆ-accession years. Within those years should be entered the death of Yunas Khan (1487) with its sequent obituary notice, and the death of [Khwaja ‘Ubaidu’l-lah] Ahrari (1491). Not only are these customary entries absent but the very introductions of the two great men are wanting, probably with the also missing account of their naming of the babe Babur. That these routine matters are a part of an autobiography planned as Babur’s was, makes for assured opinion that the record of more than his first decade of life has been lost, perhaps by the attrition to which its position in the volume exposed it.

Useful reconstruction if merely in tabulated form, might be effected in a future edition. It would save at least two surprises for readers, one the oddly abrupt first sentence telling of Babur’s age when he became ruler in Farghana (p. 1), which is a misfit in time and order, another that of the sudden interruption of ‘Umar Shaikh’s obituary by a fragment of Yunas Khan’s (p. 19) which there hangs on a mere name-peg, whereas its place according to Babur’s elsewhere unbroken practice is directly following the death. The record of the missing prÆ-accession years will have included at the least as follows:—Day of birth and its place—names and status of parents—naming and the ceremonial observances proper for Muhammadan children—visits to kinsfolk in Tashkint, and to Samarkand (Æt. 5, p. 35) where he[Pg xxxviii] was betrothed—his initiation in school subjects, in sport, the use of arms—names of teachers—education in the rules of his Faith (p. 44), appointment to the Andijan Command etc., etc.

There is now no fit beginning to the book; the present first sentence and its pendent description of Farghana should be removed to the position Babur’s practice dictates of entering the description of a territory at once on obtaining it (cf. Samarkand, Kabul, Hindustan). It might come in on p. 30 at the end of the topic (partly omitted on p. 29 where no ground is given for the manifest anxiety about Babur’s safety) of the disputed succession (Haidar, trs. p. 135) Babur’s partisan begs having the better of Jahangir’s (q.v.), and having testified obeisance, he became ruler in Farghana; his statement of age (12 years), comes in naturally and the description of his newly acquired territory follows according to rule. This removal of text to a later position has the advantage of allowing the accession to follow and not precede Babur’s father’s death.

By the removal there is left to consider the historical matter of pp. 12-13. The first paragraph concerns matter of much earlier date than ‘Umar’s death in 1494 (p. 13); it may be part of an obituary notice, perhaps that of Yunas Khan. What follows of the advance of displeased kinsmen against ‘Umar Shaikh would fall into place as part of Babur’s record of his boyhood, and lead on to that of his father’s death.

The above is a bald sketch of what might be effected in the interests of the book and to facilitate its pleasant perusal.

Chapter III.
THE TURKI MSS. AND WORK CONNECTING WITH THEM.

This chapter is a literary counterpart of “Babur Padshah’s Stone-heap,” the roadside cairn tradition says was piled by his army, each man laying his stone when passing down from Kabul for Hindustan in the year of victory 1525 (932).11

For a title suiting its contents is “Babur Padshah’s Book-pile,” because it is fashioned of item after item of pen-work done by many men in obedience to the dictates given by his book. Unlike the cairn, however, the pile of books is not of a single occasion but of many, not of a single year but of many, irregularly spacing the 500 years through which he and his autobiography have had Earth’s immortality.

Part I. The MSS. themselves.

Preliminary.—Much of the information given below was published in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society from 1900 onwards, as it came into my possession during a search for reliable Turki text of the Babur-nama. My notes were progressive; some MSS. were in distant places, some not traceable, but in the end I was able to examine in England all of whose continued existence I had become aware. It was inevitable that some of my earlier statements should be superseded later; my Notes (see s.n. JRAS.) need clearing of transitory matter and summarizing, in particular those on the Elphinstone Codex and Klaproth’s articles. Neither they nor what is placed here makes claim to be complete. Other workers will supplement them when the World has renewed opportunity to stroll in the bye-paths of literature.

Few copies of the Babur-nama seem to have been made; of the few I have traced as existing, not one contains the complete autobiography, and one alone has the maximum of dwindled text shewn in the Persian translation (1589). Two books have been reputed to contain Babur’s authentic text, one preserved in Hindustan by his descendants, the other issuing from Bukhara. They differ in total contents, arrangement and textual worth; moreover the Bukhara book compiles items of divers diction and origin and date, manifestly not from one pen.

The Hindustan book is a record—now mutilated—of the Acts of Babur alone; the Bukhara book as exhibited in its fullest accessible example, Kehr’s Codex, is in two parts, each having its preface, the first reciting Babur’s Acts, the second Humayun’s.

The Bukhara book is a compilation of oddments, mostly translated from compositions written after Babur’s death. Textual and circumstantial grounds warrant the opinion that it is a distinct work mistakenly believed to be Babur’s own; to these grounds was added in 1903 the authoritative verdict of collation with the Haidarabad Codex, and in 1921 of the colophon of its original MS. in which its author gives his name, with the title and date of his compilation (JRAS. 1900, p. 474). What it is and what are its contents and history are told in Part III of this chapter.

Part II. Work on the Hindustan MSS.

Babur’s Original Codex.

My latest definite information about Babur’s autograph MS. comes from the Padshah-nama (Bib. Ind. ed. ii, 4), whose author saw it in Shah-i-jahan’s private library between 1628 and 1638. Inference is justified, however, that it was the archetype of the Haidarabad Codex which has been estimated from the quality of its paper as dating cir. 1700 (JRAS. 1906, p. 97). But two subsequent historic disasters complicate all questions of MSS. missing from Indian libraries, namely, Nadir Shah’s vengeance on Dihli in 1739 and the dispersions and fires of the Mutiny. Faint hope is kept alive that the original Codex may have drifted into private hands, by what has occurred with the Rampur MS. of Babur’s Hindustan verses (App. J), which also appears once to have belonged to Shah-i-jahan.

I

Amongst items of work done during Babur’s life are copies of his book (or of the Hindustan section of it) he mentions sending to sons and friends.

II

The Tabaqat-i-baburi was written during Babur’s life by his Persian secretary Shaikh Zainu’d-din of Khawaf; it paraphrases in rhetorical Persian the record of a few months of Hindustan campaigning, including the battle of Panipat.

Table of the Hindustan MSS. of the Babur-nama.12

III

During the first decade of Humayun’s reign (1530-40) at least two important codices seem to have been copied.

The earlier (see Table, No. 2) has varied circumstantial warrant. It meets the need of an archetype, one marginally annotated by Humayun, for the Elphinstone Codex in which a few notes are marginal and signed, others are pell-mell, interpolated in the text but attested by a scrutineer as having been marginal in its archetype and mistakenly copied into its text. This second set has been ineffectually sponged over. Thus double collation is indicated (i) with Babur’s autograph MS. to clear out extra Babur matter, and (ii) with its archetype, to justify the statement that in this the interpolations were marginal.—No colophon survives with the much dwindled Elph. Codex, but one, suiting the situation, has been observed, where it is a complete misfit, appended to the Alwar Codex of the second Persian translation, (estimated as copied in 1589). Into the incongruities of that colophon it is not necessary to examine here, they are too obvious to aim at deceit; it appears fitly to be an imperfect translation from a Turki original, this especially through its odd fashion of entitling “Humayun Padshah.” It can be explained as translating the colophon of the Codex (No. 2) which, as his possession, Humayun allowably annotated and which makes it known that he had ordered ‘Ali’u-’l-katib to copy his father’s Turki book, and that it was finished in February, 1531, some six weeks after Babur’s death.15

The later copy made in Humayun’s first decade is Haidar Mirza’s (infra).

IV

Muhammad Haidar Mirza Dughlat’s possession of a copy of the Autobiography is known both from his mention of it and through numerous extracts translated from it in his Tarikh-i-rashidi. As a good boy-penman (p. 22) he may have copied down to 1512 (918) while with Babur (p. 350), but for obtaining a transcript of it his opportunity was while with Humayun before the Timurid exodus of 1541. He died in 1551; his Codex is likely to have found its way back from Kashmir to his ancestral home in the Kashghar region and there it may still be. (See T.R. trs. Ney Elias’ biography of him).

V

The Elphinstone Codex16 has had an adventurous career. The enigma of its archetype is posed above; it may have been copied during Akbar’s first decade (1556-67); its, perhaps first, owner was a Bai-qara rebel (d. 1567) from amongst whose possessions it passed into the Royal Library, where it was cleared of foreign matter by the expunction of Humayun’s marginal notes which its scribe had interpolated into its text. At a date I do not know, it must have left the Royal Library for its fly-leaves bear entries of prices and in 1810 it was found and purchased in Peshawar by Elphinstone. It went with him to Calcutta, and there may have been seen by Leyden during the short time between its arrival and the autumn month of the same year (1810) when he sailed for Java. In 1813 Elphinstone in Poona sent it to Erskine in Bombay, saying that he had fancied it gone to Java and had been writing to ‘Izzatu’l-lah to procure another MS. for Erskine in Bukhara, but that all the time it was on his own shelves. Received after Erskine had dolefully compared his finished work with Leyden’s (tentative) translation, Erskine sadly recommenced the review of his own work. The Codex had suffered much defacement down to 908 (1502) at the hands of “a Persian Turk of Ganj” who had interlined it with explanations. It came to Scotland (with Erskine?) who in 1826 sent it with a covering letter (Dec. 12th, 1826), at its owner’s desire, to the Advocates’ Library where it now is. In 1907 it was fully described by me in the JRAS.

VI

Of two Waqi’at-i-baburi (Pers. trs.) made in Akbar’s reign, the earlier was begun in 1583, at private instance, by two Mughuls Payanda-hasan of Ghazni and Muhammad-quli of Hisar. The Bodleian and British Museum Libraries have copies of it, very fragmentary unfortunately, for it is careful, likeable, and helpful by its small explanatory glosses. It has the great defect of not preserving autobiographic quality in its diction.

VII

The later Waqi’at-i-baburi translated by ‘Abdu’r-rahim Mirza is one of the most important items in Baburiana, both by its special characteristics as the work of a Turkman and not of a Persian, and by the great service it has done. Its origin is well-known; it was made at Akbar’s order to help Abu’l-fa?l in the Akbar-nama account of Babur and also to facilitate perusal of the Babur-nama in Hindustan. It was presented to Akbar, by its translator who had come up from Gujrat, in the last week of November, 1589, on an occasion and at a place of admirable fitness. For Akbar had gone to Kabul to visit Babur’s tomb, and was halting on his return journey at Barik-ab where Babur had halted on his march down to Hindustan in the year of victory 1525, at no great distance from “Babur Padshah’s Stone-heap”. Abu’l-fa?l’s account of the presentation will rest on ‘Abdu’r-rahim’s information (A.N. trs. cap. ci). The diction of this translation is noticeable; it gave much trouble to Erskine who thus writes of it (Memoirs Preface, lx), “Though simple and precise, a close adherence to the idioms and forms of expression of the Turki original joined to a want of distinctness in the use of the relatives, often renders the meaning extremely obscure, and makes it difficult to discover the connexion of the different members of the sentence.17 The style is frequently not Persian.... Many of the Turki words are untranslated.”

Difficult as these characteristics made Erskine’s interpretation, it appears to me likely that they indirectly were useful to him by restraining his diction to some extent in their Turki fettering.—This Turki fettering has another aspect, apart from Erskine’s difficulties, viz. it would greatly facilitate re-translation into Turki, such as has been effected, I think, in the Farghana section of the Bukhara compilation.18

VIII

This item of work, a harmless attempt of Salim (i.e. Jahangir Padshah; 1605-28) to provide the ancestral autobiography with certain stop-gaps, has caused much needless trouble and discussion without effecting any useful result. It is this:—In his own autobiography, the Tuzuk-i-jahangiri s.a. 1607, he writes of a Babur-nama Codex he examined, that it was all in Babur’s “blessed handwriting” except four portions which were in his own and each of which he attested in Turki as so being. Unfortunately he did not specify his topics; unfortunately also no attestation has been found to passages reasonably enough attributable to his activities. His portions may consist of the “Rescue-passage” (App. D) and a length of translation from the Akbar-nama, a continuous part of its Babur chapter but broken up where only I have seen it, i.e. the Bukhara compilation, into (1) a plain tale of Kanwa (1527), (2) episodes of Babur’s latter months (1529)—both transferred to the first person—and (3) an account of Babur’s death (December 26th, 1530) and Court.

Jahangir’s occupation, harmless in itself, led to an imbroglio of LanglÉs with Erskine, for the former stating in the Biographie Universelle art. Babour, that Babour’s Commentaries “augmentÉs par Jahangir” were translated into Persian by ‘Abdu’r-rahim. Erskine made answer, “I know not on what authority the learned LanglÉs hazarded this assertion, which is certainly incorrect” (Memoirs, Preface, p. ix). Had LanglÉs somewhere met with Jahangir’s attestations? He had authority if he had seen merely the statement of 1607, but Erskine was right also, because the Persian translation contains no more than the unaugmented Turki text. The royal stop-gaps are in Kehr’s MS. and through Ilminski reached De Courteille, whence the biting and thorough analysis of the three “Fragments” by Teufel. Both episodes—the LanglÉs and the Teufel ones—are time-wasters but they are comprehensible in the circumstances that Jahangir could not foresee the consequences of his doubtless good intentions.

If the question arise of how writings that had had place in Jahangir’s library reached Bukhara, their open road is through the Padshah’s correspondence (App. Q and references), with a descendant of Ahrari in whose hands they were close to Bukhara.19

It groups scattered information to recall that Salim (Jahangir) was ‘Abdu’r-rahim’s ward, that then, as now, Babur’s Autobiography was the best example of classic Turki, and that it would appeal on grounds of piety—as it did appeal on some sufficient ground—to have its broken story made good. Also that for three of the four “portions” Abu’l-fazl’s concise matter was to hand.

IX

My information concerning Baburiana under Shah-i-jahan Padshah (1628-58) is very meagre. It consists of (1) his attestation of a signature of Babur (App. Q and photo), (2) his possession of Babur’s autograph Codex (Padshah-nama, Bib. Ind. ed., ii, 4), and (3) his acceptance, and that by his literary entourage, of Mir Abu-talib Husaini’s Persian translation of Timur’s Annals, the Malfuzat whose preparation the Zafar-nama describes and whose link with Babur’s writings is that of the exemplar to the emulator.20

X

The Haidarabad Codex may have been inscribed under Aurang-zib Padshah (1655-1707). So many particulars about it have been given already that little needs saying here.21 It was the grande trouvaille of my search for Turki text wherewith to revive Babur’s autobiography both in Turki and English. My husband in 1900 saw it in Haidarabad; through the kind offices of the late Sayyid Ali Bilgrami it was lent to me; it proved to surpass, both in volume and quality, all other Babur-nama MSS. I had traced; I made its merits known to Professor Edward Granville Browne, just when the E. J. Wilkinson Gibb Trust was in formation, with the happy and accordant result that the best prose book in classic Turki became the first item in the Memorial—matris ad filium—of literary work done in the name of the Turkish scholar, and Babur’s very words were safeguarded in hundred-fold facsimile. An event so important for autobiography and for Turki literature may claim more than the bald mention of its occurrence, because sincere autobiography, however ancient, is human and social and undying, so that this was no mere case of multiplying copies of a book, but was one of preserving a man’s life in his words. There were, therefore, joyful red-letter days in the English story of the Codex—outstanding from others being those on which its merits revealed themselves (on Surrey uplands)—the one which brought Professor Browne’s acceptance of it for reproduction by the Trust—and the day of pause from work marked by the accomplished fact of the safety of the Babur-nama.

XI

The period from cir. 1700, the date of the Haidarabad Codex, and 1810, when the Elphinstone Codex was purchased by its sponsor at Peshawar, appears to have been unfruitful in work on the Hindustan MSS. Causes for this may connect with historic events, e.g. Nadir Shah’s desolation of Dihli and the rise of the East India Company, and, in Baburiana, with the disappearance of Babur’s autograph Codex (it was unknown to the Scots of 1800-26), and the transfer of the Elphinstone Codex from royal possession—this, possibly however, an accident of royal travel to and from Kabul at earlier dates.

The first quarter of the nineteenth century was, on the contrary, most fruitful in valuable work, useful impulse to which was given by Dr. John Leyden who in about 1805 began to look into Turki. Like his contemporary Julius Klaproth (q.v.), he was avid of tongues and attracted by Turki and by Babur’s writings of which he[Pg xlviii] had some knowledge through the ‘Abdu’r-rahim (Persian) translation. His Turki text-book would be the MS. of the Asiatic Society of Bengal,22 a part-copy of the Bukhara compilation, from which he had the India Office MS. copied. He took up Turki again in 1810, after his return from Malay and whilst awaiting orders in Calcutta for departure to Java. He sailed in the autumn of the year and died in August 1811. Much can be learned about him and his Turki occupations from letters (infra xiii) written to Erskine by him and by others of the Scottish band which now achieved such fine results for Babur’s Autobiography.

It is necessary to say something of Leyden’s part in producing the Memoirs, because Erskine, desiring to “lose nothing that might add to Leyden’s reputation”, has assigned to him an undue position of collaboration in it both by giving him premier place on its title-page and by attributing to him the beginning the translation. What one gleans of Leyden’s character makes an impression of unassumption that would forbid his acceptance of the posthumous position given to him, and, as his translation shews the tyro in Turki, there can be no ground for supposing he would wish his competence in it over-estimated. He had, as dates show, nothing to do with the actual work of the Memoirs which was finished before Erskine had seen in 1813 what Leyden had set down before he died in 1811. As the Memoirs is now a rare book, I quote from it what Erskine says (Preface, p. ix) of Leyden’s rough translation:—“This acquisition (i.e. of Leyden’s trs.) reduced me to rather an awkward dilemma. The two translations (his own and Leyden’s) differed in many important particulars; but as Dr. Leyden had the advantage of translating from the original, I resolved to adopt his translation as far as it went, changing only such expressions in it as seemed evidently to be inconsistent with the context, or with other parts of the Memoirs, or such as seemed evidently to originate in the oversights that are unavoidable in an unfinished work.23 This labour I had completed with some difficulty, when Mr. Elphinstone sent me the copy of the Memoirs of Baber in the original Turki (i.e. The Elphinstone Codex) which he had procured when he went to Peshawar on his embassy to Kabul. This copy, which he had supposed to have been sent with Dr. Leyden’s manuscripts from Calcutta, he was now fortunate enough to recover (in his own library at Poona). “The discovery of this valuable manuscript reduced me, though heartily sick of the task, to the necessity of commencing my work once more.”

Erskine’s Preface (pp. x, xi) contains various other references to Leyden’s work which indicate its quality as tentative and unrevised. It is now in the British Museum Library.

XII

Little need be said here about the Memoirs of Baber.24 Erskine worked on a basis of considerable earlier acquaintance with his Persian original, for, as his Preface tells, he had (after Leyden’s death) begun to translate this some years before he definitely accepted the counsel of Elphinstone and Malcolm to undertake the Memoirs. He finished his translation in 1813, and by 1816 was able to dedicate his complete volume to Elphinstone, but publication was delayed till 1826. His was difficult pioneer-work, and carried through with the drawback of working on a secondary source. It has done yeoman service, of which the crowning merit is its introduction of Babur’s autobiography to the Western world.

XIII

Amongst Erskine’s literary remains are several bound volumes of letters from Elphinstone, Malcolm, Leyden, and others of that distinguished group of Scots who promoted the revival of Babur’s writings. Erskine’s grandson, the late Mr. Lestocq Erskine, placed these, with other papers, at our disposal, and they are now located where they have been welcomed as appropriate additions:—Elphinstone’s are in the Advocates’ Library, where already (1826) he, through Erskine, had deposited his own Codex—and with his letters are those of Malcolm and more occasional correspondents; Leyden’s letters (and various papers) are in the Memorial Cottage maintained in his birthplace Denholm (Hawick) by the Edinburgh Border Counties Association; something fitting went to the Bombay Asiatic Society and a volume of diary to the British Museum. Leyden’s papers will help his fuller biography; Elphinstone’s letters have special value as recording his co-operation with Erskine by much friendly criticism, remonstrance against delay, counsels and encouragement. They, moreover, shew the estimate an accomplished man of modern affairs formed of Babur Padshah’s character and conduct; some have been quoted in Colebrooke’s Life of Elphinstone, but there they suffer by detachment from the rest of his Baburiana letters; bound together as they now are, and with brief explanatory interpolations, they would make a welcome item for “Babur Padshah’s Book-pile”.

XIV

In May 1921 the contents of these volumes were completed, namely, the Babur-nama in English and its supplements, the aims of which are to make Babur known in English diction answering to his ipsissima verba, and to be serviceable to readers and students of his book and of classic Turki.

XV

Of writings based upon or relating to Babur’s the following have appeared:—

Denkwurdigkeiten des Zahir-uddin Muhammad Babar—A. Kaiser (Leipzig, 1828). This consists of extracts translated from the Memoirs.

An abridgement of the Memoirs—R. M. Caldecott (London, 1844).

History of India—Baber and Humayun—W. Erskine (Longmans, 1854).

Babar—Rulers of India series—Stanley Lane-Poole (Oxford, 1899).

Tuzuk-i-babari or Waqi‘at-i-babari (i.e. the Persian trs.)—Elliot and Dowson’s History of India, 1872, vol. iv.

Babur Padshah Ghazi—H. Beveridge (Calcutta Review, 1899).

Babur’s diamond, was it the Koh-i-nur?—H. Beveridge, Asiatic Quarterly Review, April, 1899.

Was ‘Abdu’r-rahim the translator of Babur’s Memoirs? (i.e. the Babur-nama)—H. Beveridge, AQR., July and October, 1900.

An Empire-builder of the 16th century, Babur—Laurence F. L. Williams (Allahabad, 1918).

Notes on the MSS. of the Turki text (Babur-nama)—A. S. Beveridge, JRAS. 1900, 1902, 1921, 1905, and Part II 1906, 1907, 1908, p. 52 and p. 828, 1909 p. 452 (see Index, s.n. A. S. B. for topics).

[For other articles and notes by H. B. see Index s.n.]

Part III. The “Bukhara Babur-nama”.

This is a singular book and has had a career as singular as its characteristics, a very comedy of (blameless) errors and mischance. For it is a compilation of items diverse in origin, diction, and age, planned to be a record of the Acts of Babur and Humayun, dependent through its Babur portion on the ‘Abdu’r-rahim Persian translation for re-translation, or verbatim quotation, or dove-tailing effected on the tattered fragments of what had once been Kamran’s Codex of the Babur-nama proper, the whole interspersed by stop-gaps attributable to Jahangir. These and other specialities notwithstanding, it ranked for nearly 200 years as a reproduction of Babur’s authentic text, as such was sent abroad, as such was reconstructed and printed in Kasan (1857), translated in Paris (1871), catalogued for the Petrograd Oriental School (1894), and for the India Office (1903).25

Manifest causes for the confusion of identity are, (1) lack of the guidance in Bukhara and Petrograd of collation with the true text, (2) want of information, in the Petrograd of 1700-25, about Babur’s career, coupled with the difficulties of communication with Bukhara, (3) the misleading feature in the compiled book of its author’s retention of the autobiographic form of his sources, without explanation as to whether he entered surviving fragments of Kamran’s Codex, patchings or extracts from ‘Abdu’r-rahim’s Persian translation, or quotations of Jahangir’s stop-gaps. Of these three causes for error the first is dominant, entailing as it does the drawbacks besetting work on an inadequate basis.

It is necessary to enumerate the items of the Compilation here as they are arranged in Kehr’s autograph Codex, because that codex (still in London) may not always be accessible,26 and because the imprint does not obey its model, but aims at closer agreement of the Bukhara Compilation with Ilminski’s gratefully acknowledged guide—The Memoirs of Baber. Distinction in commenting on the Bukhara and the Kasan versions is necessary; their discrepancy is a scene in the comedy of errors.

Outline of the History of the Compilation.

An impelling cause for the production of the Bukhara compilation is suggested by the date 1709 at which was finished the earliest example known to me. For in the first decade of the eighteenth century Peter the Great gave attention to Russian relations with foreign states of Central Asia and negociated with the Khan of Bukhara for the reception of a Russian mission.31 Political aims would be forwarded if envoys were familiar with Turki; books in that tongue for use in the School of Oriental Languages would be desired; thus the Compilation may have been prompted and, as will be shown later, it appears to have been produced, and not merely copied, in 1709. The Mission’s despatch was delayed till 1719;32 it arrived in Bukhara in 1721; during its stay a member of its secretariat bought a Compilation MS. noted as finished in 1714 and on a fly-leaf of it made the following note:—

“I, Timur-pulad son of Mirza Rajab son of Pay-chin, bought this book Babur-nama after coming to Bukhara with [the] Russian Florio Beg Beneveni, envoy of the Padshah ... whose army is numerous as the stars.... May it be well received! Amen! O Lord of both Worlds!”

Timur-pulad’s hope for a good reception indicates a definite recipient, perhaps a commissioned purchase. The vendor may have been asked for a history of Babur; he sold one, but “Babur-nama” is not necessarily a title, and is not suitable for the Compilation; by conversational mischance it may have seemed so to the purchaser and thus have initiated the mistake of confusing the “Bukhara Babur-nama” with the true one.

Thus endorsed, the book in 1725 reached the Foreign Office; there in 1737 it was obtained by George Jacob Kehr, a teacher of Turki, amongst other languages, in the Oriental School, who copied it with meticulous care, understanding its meaning imperfectly, in order to produce a Latin version of it. His Latin rendering was a fiasco, but his reproduction of the Arabic forms of his archetype was so obedient that on its sole basis Ilminski edited the Kasan Imprint (1857). A collateral copy of the Timur-pulad Codex was made in 1742 (as has been said).

In 1824 Klaproth (who in 1810 had made a less valuable extract perhaps from Kehr’s Codex) copied from the Timur-pulad MS. its purchaser’s note, the Auzbeg?(?) endorsement as to the transfer of the “Kamran-docket” and Babur’s letter to Kamran (MÉmoires relatifs À l’Asie Paris).

In 1857 Ilminski, working in Kasan, produced his imprint, which became de Courteille’s source for Les MÉmoires de Baber in 1871. No worker in the above series shews doubt about accepting the Compilation as containing Babur’s authentic text. Ilminski was in the difficult position of not having entire reliance on Kehr’s transcription, a natural apprehension in face of the quality of the Latin version, his doubts sum up into his words that a reliable text could not be made from his source (Kehr’s MS.), but that a Turki reading-book could—and was. As has been said, he did not obey the dual plan of the Compilation Kehr’s transcript reveals, this, perhaps, because of the misnomer Babur-nama under which Timur-pulad’s Codex had come to Petrograd; this, certainly, because he thought a better history of Babur could be produced by following Erskine than by obeying Kehr—a series of errors following the verbal mischance of 1725. Ilminski’s transformation of the items of his source had the ill result of misleading Pavet de Courteille to over-estimate his Turki source at the expense of Erskine’s Persian one which, as has been said, was Ilminski’s guide—another scene in the comedy. A mischance hampering the French work was its falling to be done at a time when, in Paris 1871, there can have been no opportunity available for learning the contents of Ilminski’s Russian Preface or for quiet research and the examination of collateral aids from abroad.33

The Author of the Compilation.

The Haidarabad Codex having destroyed acquiescence in the phantasmal view of the Bukhara book, the question may be considered, who was its author?

This question a convergence of details about the Turki MSS. reputed to contain the Babur-nama, now allows me to answer with some semblance of truth. Those details have thrown new light upon a colophon which I received in 1900 from Mr. C. Salemann with other particulars concerning the “Senkovski Babur-nama,” this being an extract from the Compilation; its archetype reached Petrograd from Bukhara a century after Kehr’s [viz. the Timur-pulad Codex]; it can be taken as a direct copy of the Mulla’s original because it bears his colophon.34 In 1900 I accepted it as merely that of a scribe who had copied Senkovski’s archetype, but in 1921 reviewing the colophon for this Preface, it seems to me to be that of the original autograph MS. of the Compilation and to tell its author’s name, his title for his book, and the year (1709) in which he completed it.

Table of Bukhara reputed-Babur-nama MSS. (Waqi‘nama-i-padshahi?).

Senkovski brought it over from his archetype; Mr. Salemann sent it to me in its original Turki form. (JRAS. 1900, p. 474). Senkovski’s own colophon is as follows:—

“J’ai achevÉ cette copie le 4 Mai, 1824, À St. Petersburg; elle a Éte faite d’Àpres un exemplaire appartenant À Nazar Bai Turkistani, nÉgociant Boukhari, qui etait venu cette annÉe À St. Petersburg. J. Senkovski.”

The colophon Senkovski copied from his archetype is to the following purport:—

“Known and entitled Waqi‘nama-i-padshahi (Record of Royal Acts), [this] autograph and composition (bayad u navisht) of Mulla ‘Abdu’l-wahhab the Teacher, of Ghaj-davan in Bukhara—God pardon his mistakes and the weakness of his endeavour!—was finished on Monday, Rajab 5, 1121 (Aug. 31st, 1709).—Thank God!”

It will be observed that the title Waqi‘nama-i-padshahi suits the plan of dual histories (of Babur and Humayun) better than does the “Babur-nama” of Timur-pulad’s note, that the colophon does not claim for the Mulla to have copied the elder book (1494-1530) but to have written down and composed one under a differing title suiting its varied contents; that the Mulla’s deprecation and thanks tone better with perplexing work, such as his was, than with the steadfast patience of a good scribe; and that it exonerates the Mulla from suspicion of having caused his compilation to be accepted as Babur’s authentic text. Taken with its circumstanding matters, it may be the dÉnoument of the play.

The fame and long literary services of the Memoirs of Baber compel me to explain why these volumes of mine contain a verbally new English translation of the Babur-nama instead of a second edition of the Memoirs. My explanation is the simple one of textual values, of the advantage a primary source has over its derivative, Babur’s original text over its Persian translation which alone was accessible to Erskine.

If the Babur-nama owed its perennial interest to its valuable multifarious matter, the Memoirs could suffice to represent it, but this it does not; what has kept interest in it alive through some four centuries is the autobiographic presentment of an arresting personality its whole manner, style and diction produce. It is characteristic throughout, from first to last making known the personal quality of its author. Obviously that quality has the better chance of surviving a transfer of Babur’s words to a foreign tongue when this can be effected by imitation of them. To effect this was impracticable to Erskine who did not see any example of the Turki text during the progress of his translation work and had little acquaintance with Turki. No blame attaches to his results; they have been the one introduction of Babur’s writings to English readers for almost a century; but it would be as sensible to expect a potter to shape a vessel for a specific purpose without a model as a translator of autobiography to shape the new verbal container for Babur’s quality without seeing his own. Erskine was the pioneer amongst European workers on Baburiana—Leyden’s fragment of unrevised attempt to translate the Bukhara Compilation being a negligible matter, notwithstanding friendship’s deference to it; he had ready to his hand no such valuable collateral help as he bequeathed to his successors in the Memoirs volume. To have been able to help in the renewal of his book by preparing a second edition of it, revised under the authority of the Haidarabad Codex, would have been to me an act of literary piety to an old book-friend; I experimented and failed in the attempt; the wording of the Memoirs would not press back into the Turki mould. Being what it is, sound in its matter and partly representative of Babur himself, the all-round safer plan, one doing it the greater honour, was to leave it unshorn of its redundance and unchanged in its wording, in the place of worth and dignity it has held so long.

Brought to this point by experiment and failure, the way lay open to make bee-line over intermediaries back to the fountain-head of re-discovered Turki text preserved in the Haidarabad Codex. Thus I have enjoyed an advantage no translator has had since ‘Abdu’r-rahim in 1589.

Concerning matters of style and diction, I may mention that three distinct impressions of Babur’s personality are set by his own, Erskine’s and de Courteille’s words and manner. These divergencies, while partly due to differing textual bases, may result mainly from the use by the two Europeans of unsifted, current English and French. Their portrayal might have been truer, there can be no doubt, if each had restricted himself to such under-lying component of his mother-tongue as approximates in linguistic stature to classic Turki. This probability Erskine could not foresee for, having no access during his work to a Turki source and no familiarity with Turki, he missed their lessoning.

Turki, as Babur writes it—terse, word-thrifty, restrained and lucid,—comes over neatly into Anglo-Saxon English, perhaps through primal affinities. Studying Babur’s writings in verbal detail taught me that its structure, idiom and vocabulary dictate a certain mechanism for a translator’s imitation. Such are the simple sentence, devoid of relative phrasing, copied in the form found, whether abrupt and brief or, ranging higher with the topic, gracious and dignified—the retention of Babur’s use of “we” and “I” and of his frequent impersonal statement—the matching of words by their root-notion—the strict observance of Babur’s limits of vocabulary, effected by allotting to one Turki word one English equivalent, thus excluding synonyms for which Turki has little use because not shrinking from the repeated word; lastly, as preserving relations of diction, the replacing of Babur’s Arabic and Persian aliens by Greek and Latin ones naturalized in English. Some of these aids towards shaping a counterpart of Turki may be thought small, but they obey a model and their aggregate has power to make or mar a portrait.

(1) Of the uses of pronouns it may be said that Babur’s “we” is neither regal nor self-magnifying but is co-operative, as beseems the chief whose volunteer and nomad following makes or unmakes his power, and who can lead and command only by remittent consent accorded to him. His “I” is individual. The Memoirs varies much from these uses.

(2) The value of reproducing impersonal statements is seen by the following example, one of many similar:—When Babur and a body of men, making a long saddle-journey, halted for rest and refreshment by the road-side; “There was drinking,” he writes, but Erskine, “I drank”; what is likely being that all or all but a few shared the local vin du pays.

(3) The importance of observing Babur’s limits of vocabulary needs no stress, since any man of few words differs from any man of many. Measured by the Babur-nama standard, the diction of the Memoirs is redundant throughout, and frequently over-coloured. Of this a pertinent example is provided by a statement of which a minimum of seven occurrences forms my example, namely, that such or such a man whose life Babur sketches was vicious or a vicious person (fisq, fasiq). Erskine once renders the word by “vicious” but elsewhere enlarges to “debauched, excess of sensual enjoyment, lascivious, libidinous, profligate, voluptuous”. The instances are scattered and certainly Erskine could not feel their collective effect, but even scattered, each does its ill-part in distorting the Memoirs portraiture of the man of the one word.35

Postscript of Thanks.

I take with gratitude the long-delayed opportunity of finishing my book to express the obligation I feel to the Council of the Royal Asiatic Society for allowing me to record in the Journal my Notes on the Turki Codices of the Babur-nama begun in 1900 and occasionally appearing till 1921. In minor convenience of work, to be able to gather those progressive notes together and review them, has been of value to me in noticeable matters, two of which are the finding and multiplying of the Haidarabad Codex, and the definite clearance of the confusion which had made the Bukhara (reputed) Babur-nama be mistaken for a reproduction of Babur’s true text.

Immeasurable indeed is the obligation laid on me by the happy community of interests which brought under our roof the translation of the biographies of Babur, Humayun, and Akbar. What this has meant to my own work may be surmised by those who know my husband’s wide reading in many tongues of East and West, his retentive memory and his generous communism in knowledge. One signal cause for gratitude to him from those caring for Baburiana, is that it was he made known the presence of the Haidarabad Codex in its home library (1899) and thus led to its preservation in facsimile.

It would be impracticable to enumerate all whose help I keep in grateful memory and realize as the fruit of the genial camaraderie of letters.

Annette S. Beveridge.

Pitfold, Shottermill, Haslemere.
August, 1921.

THE MEMOIRS OF BABUR