The Bābur-nāma
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2805
Speede’s Indian Hand-book (i, 212) published in 1841 AD. thus writes, “It is a curious circumstance that the finest and most esteemed fruit are produced from the roots below the surface of the ground, and are betrayed by the cracking of the earth above them, and the effluvia issuing from the fissure; a high price is given by rich natives for fruit so produced.”
2806
In the margin of the Elphinstone Codex opposite the beginning of the note are the words, “This is a marginal note of Humāyūn Pādshāh’s.”
2807
Every Emperor of Hindūstān has an epithet given him after his death to distinguish him, and prevent the necessity of repeating his name too familiarly. Thus Firdaus-makān (dweller-in-paradise) is Bābur’s; Humāyūn’s is Jannat-ashi-yānī, he whose nest is in Heaven; Muḥammad Shāh’s Firdaus-āramgāh, he whose place of rest is Paradise; etc. (Erskine).
2808
Here Mr. Erskine notes, “Literally, nectar-fruit, probably the mandarin orange, by the natives called nāringī. The name amrat, or pear, in India is applied to the guava or Psidium pyriferum– (Spondias mangifera, Hort. Ben. – D. Wallich).”… Mr. E. notes also that the note on the amrit-phal “is not found in either of the Persian translations”.
2809
chūchūmān, Pers. trs. shīrīni bī maza, perhaps flat, sweet without relish. Bābur does not use the word, nor have I traced it in a dictionary.
2810
chūchūk, savoury, nice-tasting, not acid (Shaw).
2811
chūchūk nāranj āndāq (?) mat̤‘ūn aīdī kīm har kīm-nī shīrīn-kārlīghī bī masa qīlkāndī, nāranj-sū’ī dīk tūr dīrlār aīdī.
2812
The lemu may be Citrus limona, which has abundant juice of a mild acid flavour.
2813
The kāmila and samt̤ara are the real oranges (kauṅlā and sangtāra), which are now (cir. 1816 AD.) common all over India. Dr. Hunter conjectures that the sangtāra may take its name from Cintra, in Portugal. This early mention of it by Bābur and Humāyūn may be considered as subversive of that supposition. (This description of the samt̤ara, vague as it is, applies closer to the Citrus decumana or pampelmus, than to any other. – D. Wallich.) – Erskine.
2814
Humāyūn writes of this fruit as though it were not the sang-tara described by his father on f. 287 (p. 511 and note).
2815
M. de Courteille translated jama‘ in a general sense by totalit.’ instead of in its Indian technical one of revenue (as here) or of assessment. Hence Professor Dowson’s “totality” (iv, 262 n.).
2816
The B.M. has a third copy, Or. 5879, which my husband estimates as of little importance.
2817
Sir G. A. Grierson, writing in the Indian Antiquary (July 1885, p. 187), makes certain changes in Ajodhya Prasad’s list of the Brahman rulers of Tirhut, on grounds he states.
2818
Index s. n. Bābur’s letters. The passage Shaikh Zain quotes is found in Or. 1999, f. 65b, Add. 26,202, f. 66b, Or. 5879, f. 79b.
2819
Cf. Index in loco for references to Bābur’s metrical work, and for the Facsimile, JASB. 1910, Extra Number.
2820
Monday, Rabi‘ II. 15th 935 AH. – Dec. 27th 1528 AD. At this date Bābur had just returned from Dhūlpūr to Āgra (f. 354, p. 635, where in note 1 for Thursday read Monday).
2821
Owing to a scribe’s “skip” from one yībārīldī (was sent) to another at the end of the next sentence, the passage is not in the Ḥai. MS. It is not well given in my translation (f. 357b, p. 642); what stands above is a closer rendering of the full Turkī, Humāyūngha tarjuma [u?] nī-kīm Hindūstāngha kīlkānī aītqān ash’ārnī yībārīldī (Ilminsky p. 462, 1. 4 fr. ft., where however there appears a slight clerical error).
2822
Hesitation about accepting the colophon as unquestionably applying to the whole contents of the manuscript is due to its position of close association with one section only of the three in the manuscript (cf. post p. lx).
2823
Plate XI, and p. 15 (mid-page) of the Facsimile booklet. – The Facsimile does not show the whole of the marginal quatrain, obviously because for the last page of the manuscript a larger photographic plate was needed than for the rest. With Dr. Ross’ concurrence a photograph in which the defect is made good, accompanies this Appendix.
2824
The second section ends on Plate XVII, and p. 21 of the Facsimile booklet.
2825
Needless to say that whatever the history of the manuscript, its value as preserving poems of which no other copy is known publicly, is untouched. This value would be great without the marginal entries on the last page; it finds confirmation in the identity of many of the shorter poems with counterparts in the Bābur-nāma.
2826
Another autograph of Shāh-i-jahān’s is included in the translation volume (p. xiii) of Gul-badan Begam’s Humāyūn-nāma. It surprises one who works habitually on historical writings more nearly contemporary with Bābur, in which he is spoken of as Firdaus-makānī or as Gītī-sitānī Firdaus-makānī and not by the name used during his life, to find Shāh-i-jahān giving him the two styles (cf. Jahāngīr’s Memoirs trs. ii, 5). Those familiar with the writings of Shāh-i-jahān’s biographers will know whether this is usual at that date. There would seem no doubt as to the identity of ān Ḥaẓrat.– The words ān ḥaẓrat by which Shāh-i-jahān refers to Bābur are used also in the epitaph placed by Jahāngīr at Bābur’s tomb (Trs. Note p. 710-711).
2827
The Qāẓī’s rapid acquirement of the mufradāt of the script allows the inference that few letters only and those of a well-known script were varied. —Mufradāt was translated by Erskine, de Courteille and myself (f. 357b) as alphabet but reconsideration by the light of more recent information about the Bāburī-khat̤t̤ leads me to think this is wrong because “alphabet” includes every letter. – On f. 357b three items of the Bāburī-khat̤t̤ are specified as despatched with the Hindūstān poems, viz. mufradāt, qita‘lār and sar-i-khat̤t̤. Of these the first went to Hind-āl, the third to Kāmrān, and no recipient is named for the second; all translators have sent the qita‘lār to Hind-āl but I now think this wrong and that a name has been omitted, probably Humāyūn’s.
2828
f. 144b, p. 228, n. 3. Another interesting matter missing from the Bābur-nāma by the gap between 914 and 925 AH. is the despatch of an embassy to Czar Vassili III. in Moscow, mentioned in Schuyler’s Turkistan ii, 394, Appendix IV, Grigorief’s Russian Policy in Central Asia. The mission went after “Sulṯān Bābur” had established himself in Kābul; as Bābur does not write of it before his narrative breaks off abruptly in 914 AH. it will have gone after that date.
2829
I quote from the Véliaminof-Zernov edition (p. 287) from which de Courteille’s plan of work involved extract only; he translates the couplet, giving to khat̤t̤ the double-meanings of script and down of youth (Dictionnaire Turque s. n. sīghnāqī). The Sanglākh (p. 252) s. n. sīghnāq has the following as Bābur’s: —
Chū balai khat̤t̤ī naṣīb’ng būlmāsa Bābur nī tang?Bare khat̤t̤ almanṣūr khat̤t̤ sighnāqī mū dūr?2830
Gibb’s History of Ottoman Poetry i, 113 and ii, 137.
2831
Réclus’ L’Asie Russe p. 238.
2832
On this same taḥrīr qīldīm may perhaps rest the opinion that the Rāmpūr MS. is autograph.
2833
I have found no further mention of the tract; it may be noted however that whereas Bābur calls his Treatise on Prosody (written in 931 AH.) the ‘Arūẓ, Abū’l-faẓl writes of a Mufaṣṣal, a suitable name for 504 details of transposition.
2834
Tūzūk-i-jahāngīr lith. ed. p. 149; and Memoirs of jahāngīr trs. i, 304. [In both books the passage requires amending.]
2835
Rāmpūr MS. Facsimile Plate XIV and p. 16, verse 3; Akbar-nāma trs. i, 279, and lith. ed. p. 91.
2836
Cf. Index s. n. Dalmau and Bangarmau for the termination in double ū.
2837
Dr. Ilminsky says of the Leyden & Erskine Memoirs of Bābur that it was a constant and indispensable help.
2838
My examination of Kehr’s Codex has been made practicable by the courtesy of the Russian Foreign Office in lending it for my use, under the charge of the Librarian of the India Office, Dr. F. W. Thomas. – It should be observed that in this Codex the Hindūstān Section contains the purely Turkī text found in the Ḥaidarābād Codex (cf. JRAS. 1908, p. 78).
2839
It may indicate that the List was not copied by Bābur but lay loose with his papers, that it is not with the Elphinstone Codex, and is not with the ‘Abdu’r-raḥīm Persian translation made from a manuscript of that same annotated line.
2840
Cf. in loco p. 656, n. 3.
2841
A few slight changes in the turn of expressions have been made for clearness sake.
2842
Index s. n. Mīr Bāqī of Tāshkīnt. Perhaps a better epithet for sa‘ādạt-nishān than “good-hearted” would be one implying his good fortune in being designated to build a mosque on the site of the ancient Hindū temple.
2843
There is a play here on Bāqī’s name; perhaps a good wish is expressed for his prosperity together with one for the long permanence of the sacred building khair (khairat).
2844
Presumably the order for building the mosque was given during Bābur’s stay in Aūd (Ajodhya) in 934 AH. at which time he would be impressed by the dignity and sanctity of the ancient Hindū shrine it (at least in part) displaced, and like the obedient follower of Muḥammad he was in intolerance of another Faith, would regard the substitution of a temple by a mosque as dutiful and worthy. – The mosque was finished in 935 AH. but no mention of its completion is in the Bābur-nāma. The diary for 935 AH. has many minor lacunæ; that of the year 934 AH. has lost much matter, breaking off before where the account of Aūd might be looked for.
2845
The meaning of this couplet is incomplete without the couplet that followed it and is (now) not legible.
2846
Firishta gives a different reason for Bābur’s sobriquet of qalandar, namely, that he kept for himself none of the treasure he acquired in Hindūstān (Lith. ed. p. 206).
2847
Jahāngīr who encamped in the Shahr-ārā-garden in Ṣafar 1016 AH. (May 1607 AD.) says it was made by Bābur’s aunt, Abū-sa‘īd’s daughter Shahr-bānū (Rogers and Beveridge’s Memoirs of Jahāngīr i, 106).
2848
A jalau-khāna might be where horse-head-gear, bridles and reins are kept, but Āyīn 60 (A. – i-A.) suggests there may be another interpretation.
2849
She was a daughter of Hind-āl, was a grand-daughter therefore of Bābur, was Akbar’s first wife, and brought up Shāh-i-jahān. Jahāngīr mentions that she made her first pilgrimage to her father’s tomb on the day he made his to Bābur’s, Friday Ṣafar 26th 1016 AH. (June 12th 1607 AD.). She died æt. 84 on Jumāda I. 7th 1035 AH. (Jan. 25th 1626 AD.). Cf. Tūzūk-i-jahāngīrī, Muḥ. Hādī’s Supplement lith. ed. p. 401.
2850
Mr. H. H. Hayden’s photograph of the mosque shows pinnacles and thus enables its corner to be identified in his second of the tomb itself.
2851
One of Daniel’s drawings (which I hope to reproduce) illuminates this otherwise somewhat obscure passage, by showing the avenue, the borders of running-water and the little water-falls, – all reminding of Madeira.
2852
chokī, perhaps “shelter”; see Hobson-Jobson s. n.
2853
If told with leisurely context, the story of the visits of Bābur’s descendants to Kābul and of their pilgrimages to his tomb, could hardly fail to interest its readers.
2854
That Babur-nama of the “Kamran-docket” is the mutilated and tattered basis, allowed by circumstance, of the compiled history of Babur, filled out and mended by the help of the Persian translation of 1589. Cf. Kehr’s Latin Trs. fly-leaf entry; Klaproth s. n.; A.N. trs. H.B., p. 260; JRAS. 1908, 1909, on the “Kamran-docket” where are defects needing Klaproth’s second article (1824).)
2855
For an analysis of an illustrative passage see JRAS. 1906; for facilities of re-translation see eo cap. p. xviii, where Erskine is quoted.)
2856
See A.N. trans., p. 260; Prefaces of Ilminski and de Courteille; ZDMG. xxxvii, Teufel’s art.; JRAS. 1906.)
2857
For particulars about Kehr’s Codex see Smirnov’s Catalogue of the School Library and JRAS. 1900, 1906. Like others who have made statements resting on the mistaken identity of the Bukhara Compilation, many of mine are now given to the winds.)