The Bābur-nāma

Before giving our grounds for rejecting what has been offered to fill the gap of 908 AH. a few words must be said about the lacuna itself. Nothing indicates that Bābur left it and, since both in the Elphinstone Codex and its archetype, the sentence preceding it lacks the terminal verb, it seems due merely to loss of pages. That the loss, if any, was of early date is clear, – the Elph. MS. itself being copied not later than 1567 AD. (JRAS. 1907, p. 137).

Two known circumstances, both of earlier date than that of the Elphinstone Codex, might have led to the loss, – the first is the storm which in 935 AH. scattered Bābur’s papers (f. 376b), the second, the vicissitudes to which Humāyūn’s library was exposed in his exile.2751 Of the two the first seems the more probable cause.

The rupture of a story at a point so critical as that of Bābur’s danger in Karnān would tempt to its completion; so too would wish to make good the composed part of the Bābur-nāma. Humāyūn annotated the archetype of the Elphinstone Codex a good deal but he cannot have written the Rescue passage if only because he was in a position to avoid some of its inaccuracies.

CONTEXT AND TRANSLATION OF THE RESCUE PASSAGE

To facilitate reference, I quote the last words preceding the gap purported to be filled by the Rescue passage, from several texts; —

(a) Elphinstone MS. f. 89b, —Qūptūm. Bāgh gosha-sī-gha bārdīm. Aūzūm bīla andesha qīldīm. Dīdīm kīm kīshī agar yūz u agar mīng yāshāsā, ākhir hech…

(b) The Ḥai. MS. (f. 118b) varies from the Elphinstone by omitting the word hech and adding aūlmāk kīrāk, he must die.

(c) Pāyanda-ḥasan’s Wāqi‘āt-i-bāburī (I. O. 215, f. 96b), —Barkhwāstam u dar gosha-i bāgh raftam. Ba khūd andesha karda, guftam kah agar kase ṣad sāl yā hazār sāl ‘umr dāshta bāshad, ākhir hech ast. (It will be seen that this text has the hech of the Elph. MS.)

(d) ‘Abdu’r-raḥīm’s Wāqi‘āt-i-bāburī (I. O. 217, f. 79), —Barkhwāstam u ba gosha-i-bāgh raftam. Ba khūd andeshīdam u guftam kah agar kase ṣad sāl u agar hazār sāl ‘umr bayābad ākhir…

(e) Muḥ. Shīrāzī’s lith. ed. (p. 75) finishes the sentence with ākhir khūd bāyad murd, at last one must die, – varying as it frequently does, from both of the Wāqi‘āt.

(f) Kehr’s MS. (p. 383-454), Ilminsky, p. 144, —Qūpūb bāghnīng bīr būrjī-ghā bārīb, khāt̤irīm-ghā kīltūrdīm kīm agar adam yūz yīl u agar mīng yīl tīrīk būlsā, ākhir aūlmāk dīn aūzkā chāra yūq tūr. (I rose. Having gone to a tower of the garden, I brought it to my mind that if a person be alive 100 years or a thousand years, at last he has no help other than to die.)

The Rescue passage is introduced by a Persian couplet, identified by my husband as from Niz̤āmī’s Khusrau u Shīrīn, which is as follows; —

If you stay a hundred years, and if one year,Forth you must go from this heart-delighting palace.

I steadied myself for death (qarār bīrdīm). In that garden a stream came flowing;2752 I made ablution; I recited the prayer of two inclinations (ra‘kat); having raised my head for silent prayer, I was making earnest petition when my eyes closed in sleep.2753 I am seeing2754 that Khwāja Yaq‘ūb, the son of Khwāja Yaḥyā and grandson of His Highness Khwāja ‘Ubaidu’l-lāh, came facing me, mounted on a piebald horse, with a large company of piebald horsemen (sic).2755 He said: ‘Lay sorrow aside! Khwāja Aḥrār (i. e. ‘Ubaidu’l-lāh) has sent me to you; he said, “We, having asked help for him (i. e. Bābur), will seat him on the royal throne;2756 wherever difficulty befalls him, let him look towards us (lit. bring us to sight) and call us to mind; there will we be present.” Now, in this hour, victory and success are on your side; lift up your head! awake!'

At that time I awoke happy, when Yūsuf and those with him2757 were giving one another advice. ‘We will make a pretext to deceive; to seize and bind2758 is necessary.’ Hearing these words, I said, ‘Your words are of this sort, but I will see which of you will come to my presence to take me.’ I was saying this when outside the garden wall2759 came the noise of approaching horsemen. Yūsuf darogha said, ‘If we had taken you to Taṃbal our affairs would have gone forward. Now he has sent again many persons to seize you.’ He was certain that this noise might be the footfall of the horses of those sent by Taṃbal. On hearing those words anxiety grew upon me; what to do I did not know. At this time those horsemen, not happening to find the garden gate, broke down the wall where it was old (and) came in. I saw (kūrsām, lit. might see) that Qutluq Muḥ. Barlās and Bābā-i Pargharī, my life-devoted servants, having arrived [with], it may be, ten, fifteen, twenty persons, were approaching. Having flung themselves from their horses,2760 bent the knee from afar and showed respect, they fell at my feet. In that state (ḥal) such ecstasy (ḥāl) came over me that you might say (goyā) God gave me life from a new source (bāsh). I said, ‘Seize and bind that Yūsuf darogha and these here (tūrghān) hireling mannikins.’ These same mannikins had taken to flight. They (i. e. the rescuers), having taken them, one by one, here and there, brought them bound. I said, ‘Where do you come from? How did you get news?’ Qutluq Muḥ. Barlās said: ‘When, having fled from Akhsī, we were separated from you in the flight, we went to Andijān when the Khāns also came to Andijān. I saw a vision that Khwāja ‘Ubaidu’l-lāh said, “Bābur pādshāh2761 is in a village called Karnān; go and bring him, since the royal seat (masnad) has become his possession (ta‘alluq).” I having seen this vision and become happy, represented (the matter) to the Elder Khān (and) the Younger Khān. I said to the Khāns, “I have five or six younger brothers (and) sons; do you add a few soldiers. I will go through the Karnān side and bring news.” The Khāns said, “It occurs to our minds also that (he) may have gone that same road (?).” They appointed ten persons; they said, “Having gone in that direction (sārī) and made very sure, bring news. Would to God you might get true news!” We were saying this when Bābā-i Parghārī said, “I too will go and seek.” He also having agreed with two young men, (his) younger brothers, we rode out. It is three days to-day that we are on the road. Thank God! we have found you.’ They said (dīdīlār, for dīb). They spoke (aītīlār), ‘Make a move! Ride off! Take these bound ones with you! To stay here is not well; Taṃbal has had news of your coming here; go, in whatever way, and join yourself to the Khāns!’ At that time we having ridden out, moved towards Andijān. It was two days that we had eaten no food; the evening prayer had come when we found a sheep, went on, dismounted, killed, and roasted. Of that same roast we ate as much as a feast. After that we rode on, hurried forward, made a five days’ journey in a day and two nights, came and entered Andijān. I saluted my uncle the Elder Khān (and) my uncle the Younger Khān, and made recital of past days. With the Khāns I spent four months. My servants, who had gone looking in every place, gathered themselves together; there were more than 300 persons. It came to my mind (kīm), ‘How long must I wander, a vagabond (sar-gardān),2762 in this Farghāna country? I will make search (t̤alab) on every side (dīb).’ Having said, I rode out in the month of Muḥarram to seek Khurāsān, and I went out from the country of Farghāna.2763

REASONS AGAINST THE REJECTION OF THE RESCUE PASSAGE

Two circumstances have weight against rejecting the passage, its presence with the Ḥaidarābād Codex and its acceptance by Dr. Ilminsky and M. de Courteille.

That it is with the Codex is a matter needing consideration and this the more that it is the only extra matter there found. Not being with the Persian translations, it cannot be of early date. It seems likely to owe its place of honour to distinguished authorship and may well be one of the four portions (juzwe) mentioned by Jahāngīr in the Tuzūk-i-jahāngīrī,2764 as added by himself to his ancestor’s book. If so, it may be mentioned, it will have been with Bābur’s autograph MS. [now not to be found], from which the Ḥaidarābād Codex shews signs of being a direct copy.2765

[The incongruity of the Rescue passage with the true text has been indicated by foot-notes to the translation of it already given. What condemns it on historic and other grounds will follow.]

On linguistic grounds it is a strong argument in its favour that Dr. Ilminsky and M. de Courteille should have accepted it but the argument loses weight when some of the circumstances of their work are taken into account.

In the first place, it is not strictly accurate to regard Dr. Ilminsky as accepting it unquestioned, because it is covered by his depreciatory remarks, made in his preface, on Kehr’s text. He, like M. de Courteille, worked with a single Turkī MS. and neither of the two ever saw a complete true text. When their source (the Kehr-Ilminsky) was able to be collated with the Elph. and Ḥai. MSS. much and singular divergence was discovered.

I venture to suggest what appears to me to explain M. de Courteille’s acceptance of the Rescue passage. Down to its insertion, the Kehr-Ilminsky text is so continuously and so curiously corrupt that it seems necessary to regard it as being a re-translation into Turkī from one of the Persian translations of the Bābur-nāma. There being these textual defects in it, it would create on the mind of a reader initiated through it, only, in the book, an incorrect impression of Bābur’s style and vocabulary, and such a reader would feel no transition when passing on from it to the Rescue passage.

In opposition to this explanation, it might be said that a wrong standard set up by the corrupt text, would or could be changed by the excellence of later parts of the Kehr-Ilminsky one. In words, this is sound, no doubt, and such reflex criticism is now easy, but more than the one defective MS. was wanted even to suggest the need of such reflex criticism. The Bābur-nāma is lengthy, ponderous to poise and grasp, and work on it is still tentative, even with the literary gains since the Seventies.

Few of the grounds which weigh with us for the rejection of the Rescue passage were known to Dr. Ilminsky or M. de Courteille; – the two good Codices bring each its own and varied help; Teufel’s critique on the ‘Fragments,’ though made without acquaintance with those adjuncts as they stand in Kehr’s own volume, is of much collateral value; several useful oriental histories seem not to have been available for M. de Courteille’s use. I may add, for my own part, that I have the great advantage of my husband’s companionship and the guidance of his wide acquaintance with related oriental books. In truth, looking at the drawbacks now removed, an earlier acceptance of the passage appears as natural as does today’s rejection.

GROUNDS FOR REJECTING THE RESCUE PASSAGE

The grounds for rejecting the passage need here little more than recapitulation from my husband’s article in the JASB. 1910, p. 221, and are as follows; —

i. The passage is in neither of the Wāqi‘āt-i-bāburī.

ii. The dreams detailed are too à propos and marvellous for credence.

iii. Khwāja Yaḥyā is not known to have had a son, named Ya‘qūb.

iv. The Bābur-nāma does not contain the names assigned to the rescuers.

v. The Khāns were not in Andijān and Bābur did not go there.

vi. He did not set out for Khurāsān after spending 4 months with The Khāns but after Aḥmad’s death (end of 909 AH.), while Maḥmud was still in Eastern Turkistān and after about a year’s stay in Sūkh.

vii. The followers who gathered to him were not ‘more than 300’ but between 2 and 300.

viii. The ‘3 days,’ and the ‘day and two nights,’ and the ‘5 days’ journey was one of some 70 miles, and one recorded as made in far less time.

ix. The passage is singularly inadequate to fill a gap of 14 to 16 months, during which events of the first importance occurred to Bābur and to the Chaghatāī dynasty.

x. Khwāja Aḥrārī’s promises did nothing to fulfil Bābur’s wishes for 908 AH. while those of Ya‘qūb for immediate victory were closely followed by defeat and exile. Bābur knew the facts; the passage cannot be his. It looks as though the writer saw Bābur in Karnān across Tīmūrid success in Hindūstān.

xi. The style and wording of the passage are not in harmony with those of the true text.

Other reasons for rejection are marked change in choice of the details chosen for commemoration, e. g. when Bābur mentions prayer, he does so simply; when he tells a dream, it seems a real one. The passage leaves the impression that the writer did not think in Turkī, composed in it with difficulty, and looked at life from another view-point than Bābur’s.

On these various grounds, we have come to the conclusion that it is no part of the Bābur-nāma.

[APPENDICES TO THE KĀBUL SECTION.]

E. – NAGARAHĀR, AND NĪNG-NAHĀR

Those who consult books and maps about the riverain tract between the Safed-koh (Spīn-ghur) and (Anglicé) the Kābul-river find its name in several forms, the most common being Nangrahār and Nangnahār (with variant vowels). It would be useful to establish a European book-name for the district. As European opinion differs about the origin and meaning of the names now in use, and as a good deal of interesting circumstance gathers round the small problem of a correct form (there may be two), I offer about the matter what has come into the restricted field of my own work, premising that I do this merely as one who drops a casual pebble on the cairn of observation already long rising for scholarly examination.

a. The origin and meaning of the names.

I have met with three opinions about the origin and meaning of the names found now and earlier. To each one of them obvious objection can be made. They are: —

1. That all forms now in use are corruptions of the Sanscrit word Nagarahāra, the name of the Town-of-towns which in the dū-āb of the Bārān-sū and Sūrkh-rūd left the ruins Masson describes in Wilson’s Ariana Antigua. But if this is so, why is the Town-of-towns multiplied into the nine of Na-nagrahār (Nangrahār)?2766

2. That the names found represent Sanscrit nawā vihāra, nine monasteries, an opinion the Gazetteer of India of 1907 has adopted from Bellew. But why precisely nine monasteries? Nine appears an understatement.

3. That Nang (Ning or Nung) – nahār verbally means nine streams, (Bābur’s Tūqūz-rūd,) an interpretation of long standing (Section b infra). But whence nang, ning, nung, for nine? Such forms are not in Persian, Turkī or Pushtu dictionaries, and, as Sir G. A. Grierson assures me, do not come into the Linguistic Survey.

b. On nang, ning, nung for nine.

Spite of their absence from the natural homes of words, however, the above sounds have been heard and recorded as symbols of the number nine by careful men through a long space of time.

The following instances of the use of “Nangnahār” show this, and also show that behind the variant forms there may be not a single word but two of distinct origin and sense.

1. In Chinese annals two names appear as those of the district and town (I am not able to allocate their application with certainty). The first is Na-kie-lo-ho-lo, the second Nang-g-lo-ho-lo and these, I understand to represent Nagara-hāra and Nang-nahār, due allowance being made for Chinese idiosyncrasy.2767

2. Some 900 years later (1527-30 AD.) Bābur also gives two names, Nagarahār (as the book-name of his tūmān) and Nīng-nahār.2768 He says the first is found in several histories (B.N. f. 131b); the second will have been what he heard and also presumably what appeared in revenue accounts; of it he says, “it is nine torrents” (tūqūz-rūd).

3. Some 300 years after Bābur, Elphinstone gives two names for the district, neither of them being Bābur’s book-name, “Nangrahaur2769 or Nungnahaur, from the nine streams which issue from the Safed-koh, nung in Pushtoo signifying nine, and nahaura, a stream” (Caubul, i, 160).

4. In 1881 Colonel H. S. Tanner had heard, in Nūr-valley on the north side of the Kābul-water, that the name of the opposite district was Nīng-nahār and its meaning Nine-streams. He did not get a list of the nine and all he heard named do not flow from Safed-koh.

5. In 1884 Colonel H. G. McGregor gives two names with their explanation, “Ningrahar and Nungnihar; the former is a corruption of the latter word2770 which in the Afghān language signifies nine rivers or rivulets.” He names nine, but of them six only issue from Safed-koh.

6. I have come across the following instances in which the number nine is represented by other words than na (ni or nu); viz. the nenhan of the Chitrālī Kāfir and the noun of the Panjābi, recorded by Leech, – the nyon of the Khowārī and the huncha of the Boorishki, recorded by Colonel Biddulph.

The above instances allow opinion that in the region concerned and through a long period of time, nine has been expressed by nang (ning or nung) and other nasal or high palatal sounds, side by side with na (ni or nu). The whole matter may be one of nasal utterance,2771 but since a large number of tribesmen express nine by a word containing a nasal sound, should that word not find place in lists of recognized symbols of sounds?

c. Are there two names of distinct origin?

1. Certainly it makes a well-connected story of decay in the Sanscrit word Nagarahāra to suppose that tribesmen, prone by their organism to nasal utterance, pronounced that word Nangrahār, and by force of their numbers made this corruption current, – that this was recognized as the name of the town while the Town-of-towns was great or in men’s memory, and that when through the decay of the town its name became a meaningless husk, the wrong meaning of the Nine-streams should enter into possession.

But as another and better one can be put together, this fair-seeming story may be baseless. Its substitute has the advantage of explaining the double sequence of names shown in Section b.

The second story makes all the variant names represent one or other of two distinct originals. It leaves Nagrahār to represent Nagarahāra, the dead town; it makes the nine torrents of Safed-koh the primeval sponsors of Nīng-nahār, the name of the riverain tract. Both names, it makes contemporary in the relatively brief interlude of the life of the town. For the fertilizing streams will have been the dominant factors of settlement and of revenue from the earliest times of population and government. They arrest the eye where they and their ribbons of cultivation space the riverain waste; they are obvious units for grouping into a sub-government. Their name has a counterpart in adjacent Panj-āb; the two may have been given by one dominant power, how long ago, in what tongue matters not. The riverain tract, by virtue of its place on a highway of transit, must have been inhabited long before the town Nagarahāra was built, and must have been known by a name. What better one than Nine-streams can be thought of?

2. Bellew is quoted by the Gazetteer of India (ed. 1907) as saying, in his argument in favour of nawā vihāra, that no nine streams are found to stand sponsor, but modern maps shew nine outflows from Safed-koh to the Kābul-river between the Sūrkh-rūd and Daka, while if affluents to the former stream be reckoned, more than nine issue from the range.2772

Against Bellew’s view that there are not nine streams, is the long persistence of the number nine in the popular name (Sect. b).

It is also against his view that he supposes there were nine monasteries, because each of the nine must have had its fertilizing water.

Bābur says there were nine; there must have been nine of significance; he knew his tūmān not only by frequent transit but by his revenue accounts. A supporting point in those accounts is likely to have been that the individual names of the villages on the nine streams would appear, with each its payment of revenue.

3. In this also is some weight of circumstance against taking Nagarahāra to be the parent of Nīng-nahār: – An earlier name of the town is said to be Udyānapūra, Garden town.2773 Of this Bābur’s Adīnapūr is held to be a corruption; the same meaning of garden has survived on approximately the same ground in Bālā-bāgh and Roẓābād.

Nagarahāra is seen, therefore, to be a parenthetical name between others which are all derived from gardens. It may shew the promotion of a “Garden-town” to a “Chief-town”. If it did this, there was relapse of name when the Chief-town lost status. Was it ever applied beyond the delta? If it were, would it, when dead in the delta, persist along the riverain tract? If it were not, cadit quæstio; the suggestion of two names distinct in origin, is upheld.

Certainly the riverain tract would fall naturally under the government of any town flourishing in the delta, the richest and most populous part of the region. But for this very reason it must have had a name older than parenthetical Nagarahāra. That inevitable name would be appropriately Nīng-nahār (or Na-nahār) Nine-streams; and for a period Nagarahāra would be the Chief-town of the district of Na-nahār (Nine-streams).2774

d. Bābur’s statements about the name.

What the cautious Bābur says of his tūmān of Nīng-nahār has weight: —

1. That some histories write it Nagarahār (Ḥaidarābād Codex, f. 131b);

2. That Nīng-nahār is nine torrents, i. e. mountain streams, tūquz-rud;

3. That (the) nine torrents issue from Safed-koh (f. 132b).

Of his first statement can be said, that he will have seen the book-name in histories he read, but will have heard Nīng-nahār, probably also have seen it in current letters and accounts.

Of his second, – that it bears and may be meant to bear two senses, (a) that the tūmān consisted of nine torrents, – their lands implied; just as he says “Asfara is four būlūks” (sub-divisions f. 3b) – (b) that tūqūz rūd translates nīng-nahār.

Of his third, – that in English its sense varies as it is read with or without the definite article Turkī rarely writes, but that either sense helps out his first and second, to mean that verbally and by its constituent units Nīng-nahār is nine-torrents; as verbally and by its constituents Panj-āb is five-waters.

e. Last words.

Detailed work on the Kābul section of the Bābur-nāma has stamped two impressions so deeply on me, that they claim mention, not as novel or as special to myself, but as set by the work.

The first is of extreme risk in swift decision on any problem of words arising in North Afghānistān, because of its local concourse of tongues, the varied utterance of its unlettered tribes resident or nomad, and the frequent translation of proper names in obedience to their verbal meanings. Names lie there too in strata, relics of successive occupation – Greek, Turkī, Hindī, Pushtū and tribes galore.

The second is that the region is an exceptionally fruitful field for first-hand observation of speech, the movent ocean of the uttered word, free of the desiccated symbolism of alphabets and books.

The following books, amongst others, have prompted the above note: —

Ghoswāra Inscription, Kittoe, JASB., 1848, and Kielhorn, Indian Antiquary, 1888, p. 311.

H. Sastrī’s Rāmacārita, Introduction, p. 7 (ASB. Memoirs).

Cunningham’s Ancient India, vol. i.

Beal’s Buddhist Records, i, xxxiv, and cii, 91.

Leech’s Vocabularies, JASB., 1838.

The writings of Masson (Travels and Ariana Antiqua), Wood, Vigne, etc.

Raverty’s T̤abaqāt-i-nāsirī.