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-nāma, 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.16
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.17
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.18 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 had some knowledge through the ‘Abdu’r-rahim (Persian) translation. His Turki text-book would be the MS. of the Asiatic Society of Bengal,19 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.20 This labour I had completed with some difficulty, when Mr. Elphinstone sent me the copy of the Memoirs of Baber in the original Tūrkī (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