The Bābur-nāma

Besides L. Impeyanus and Trapagon Ceriornis satyra which Yule mentions as called “moonaul”, there are L. refulgens, mūnāl and Ghūr (mountain) -mūnāl; Trapagon Ceriornis satyra, called mūnāl in Nipāl; T. C. melanocephalus, called sing (horned) -mūnāl in the N.W. Himālayas; T. himālayensis, the jer– or cher-mūnāl of the same region, known also as chikor; and Lerwa nevicola, the snow-partridge known in Garhwal as Quoir– or Qūr-mūnāl. Do all these birds behave in such a way as to suggest that mūnāl may imply the individual isolation related by Jerdon of L. Impeyanus, “In the autumnal and winter months numbers are generally collected in the same quarter of the forest, though often so widely scattered that each bird appears to be alone?” My own search amongst vocabularies of hill-dialects for the meaning of the word has been unsuccessful, spite of the long range mūnāls in the Himālayas.

c. Concerning the word chīūrtika, chourtka.

Jerdon’s entry (ii, 549, 554) of the name chourtka as a synonym of Tetraogallus himālayensis enables me to fill a gap I have left on f. 249 (p. 491 and n. 6),2803 with the name Himālayan snow-cock, and to allow Bābur’s statement to be that he, in January 1520 AD. when coming down from the Bād-i-pīch pass, saw many snow-cocks. The Memoirs (p.282) has “chikors”, which in India is a synonym for kabg-i-darī; the Mémoires (ii, 122) has sauterelles, but this meaning of chīūrtika does not suit wintry January. That month would suit for the descent from higher altitudes of snow-cocks. Griffith, a botanist who travelled in Afghānistān cir. 1838 AD., saw myriads of cicadæ between Qilat-i-ghilzai and Ghazni, but the month was July.

d. On the qūt̤ān (f. 142, p. 224; Memoirs, p. 153; Mémoires ii, 313).

Mr. Erskine for qūt̤ān enters khawāṣil [gold-finch] which he will have seen interlined in the Elphinstone Codex (f. 109b) in explanation of qūt̤ān.

Shaikh Effendi (Kunos’ ed., p. 139) explains qūt̤ān to be the gold-finch, Steiglitz.

Ilminsky’s qūtān (p. 175) is translated by M. de Courteille as pélicane and certainly some copies of the 2nd Persian translation [Muḥ. Shīrāzi’s p. 90] have ḥawāṣil, pelican.

The pelican would class better than the small finch with the herons and egrets of Bābur’s trio; it also would appear a more likely bird to be caught “with the cord”.

That Bābur’s qūt̤ān (ḥawāṣil) migrated in great numbers is however against supposing it to be Pelicanus onocrotatus which is seen in India during the winter, because it appears there in moderate numbers only, and Blanford with other ornithologists states that no western pelican migrates largely into India.

Perhaps the qūt̤ān was Linnæus’ Pelicanus carbo of which one synonym is Carbo comoranus, the cormorant, a bird seen in India in large numbers of both the large and small varieties. As cormorants are not known to breed in that country, they will have migrated in the masses Bābur mentions.

A translation matter falls to mention here: – After saying that the aūqār (grey heron), qarqara (egret), and qūtān (cormorant) are taken with the cord, Bābur says that this method of bird-catching is unique (bū nūḥ qūsh tūtmāq ghair muqarrar dūr) and describes it. The Persian text omits to translate the tūtmāq (by P. giriftan); hence Erskine (Mems. p. 153) writes, “The last mentioned fowl” (i. e. the qūt̤ān) “is rare,” notwithstanding Bābur’s statement that all three of the birds he names are caught in masses. De Courteille (p. 313) writes, as though only of the qūtān, “ces derniers toutefois ne se prennent qu’accidentelment,” perhaps led to do so by knowledge of the circumstance that Pelicanus onocrotatus is rare in India.

O. – NOTES BY HUMĀYŪN ON SOME HINDŪSTĀN FRUITS

The following notes, which may be accepted as made by Humāyūn and in the margin of the archetype of the Elphinstone Codex, are composed in Turkī which differs in diction from his father’s but is far closer to that classic model than is that of the producer [Jahāngīr?] of the “Fragments” (Index s. n.). Various circumstances make the notes difficult to decipher verbatim and, unfortunately, when writing in Jan. 1917, I am unable to collate with its original in the Advocates Library, the copy I made of them in 1910.

a. On the kadhil, jack-fruit, Artocarpus integrifolia (f. 283b, p. 506; Elphinstone MS. f. 235b).2804

The contents of the note are that the strange-looking pumpkin (qar‘, which is also Ibn Batuta’s word for the fruit), yields excellent white juice, that the best fruit grows from the roots of the tree,2805 that many such grow in Bengal, and that in Bengal and Dihli there grows a kadhil-tree covered with hairs (Artocarpus hirsuta?).

b. On the amrit-phal, mandarin-orange, Citrus aurantium (f. 287, p. 512; Elphinstone Codex, f. 238b, l. 12).

The interest of this note lies in its reference to Bābur.

A Persian version of it is entered, without indication of what it is or of who was its translator, in one of the volumes of Mr. Erskine’s manuscript remains, now in the British Museum (Add. 26,605, p. 88). Presumably it was made by his Turkish munshi for his note in the Memoirs (p. 329).

Various difficulties oppose the translation of the Turkī note; it is written into the text of the Elphinstone Codex in two instalments, neither of them in place, the first being interpolated in the account of the amil-bīd fruit, the second in that of the jāsūn flower; and there are verbal difficulties also. The Persian translation is not literal and in some particulars Mr. Erskine’s rendering of this differs from what the Turkī appears to state.

The note is, tentatively, as follows:2806– “His honoured Majesty Firdaus-makān2807– may God make his proof clear! – did not favour the amrit-phal;2808 as he considered it insipid,2809 he likened it to the mild-flavoured2810 orange and did not make choice of it. So much was the mild-flavoured orange despised that if any person had disgusted (him) by insipid flattery(?) he used to say, ‘He is like orange-juice.’”2811

“The amrit-phal is one of the very good fruits. Though its juice is not relishing (? chūchūq), it is extremely pleasant-drinking. Later on, in my own time, its real merit became known. Its tartness may be that of the orange (nāranj)and lemu.”2812

The above passage is followed, in the text of the Elphinstone Codex, by Bābur’s account of the jāsūn flower, and into this a further instalment of Humāyūn’s notes is interpolated, having opposite its first line the marginal remark, “This extra note, seemingly made by Humāyūn Pādshāh, the scribe has mistakenly written into the text.” Whether its first sentence refer to the amrit-phal or to the amil-bīd must be left for decision to those well acquainted with the orange-tribe. It is obscure in my copy and abbreviated in its Persian translation; summarized it may state that when the fruit is unripe, its acidity is harmful to the digestion, but that it is very good when ripe. – The note then continues as below: —

c. The kāmila, H. kauṅlā, the orange. 2813

“There are in Bengal two other fruits of the acid kind. Though the amrit-phal be not agreeable, they have resemblance to it (?).”

“One is the kāmila which may be as large as an orange (nāranj); some took it to be a large nārangī (orange) but it is much pleasanter eating than the nārangī and is understood not to have the skin of that (fruit).”

d. The samt̤ara. 2814

“The other is the samt̤ara which is larger than the orange (nāranj) but is not tart; unlike the amrit-phal it is not of poor flavour (kam maza) or little relish (chūchūk). In short a better fruit is not seen. It is good to see, good to eat, good to digest. One does not forget it. If it be there, no other fruit is chosen. Its peel may be taken off by the hand. However much of the fruit be eaten, the heart craves for it again. Its juice does not soil the hand at all. Its skin separates easily from its flesh. It may be taken during and after food. In Bengal the samt̤ara is rare (ghārib) (or excellent, ‘asīz). It is understood to grow in one village Sanārgām (Sonargaon) and even therein a special quarter. There seems to be no fruit so entirely good as the samt̤ara amongst fruits of its class or, rather, amongst fruits of all kinds.”

Corrigendum: – In my note on the turunj bajāurī (p. 511, n. 3) for bijaurā read bījaurā; and on p. 510, l. 2, for palm read fingers.

Addendum: – p. 510, l. 5. After yūsūnlūk add: – “The natives of Hindūstān when not wearing their ear-rings, put into the large ear-ring holes, slips of the palm-leaf bought in the bāzārs, ready for the purpose. The trunk of this tree is handsomer and more stately than that of the date.”

P. – REMARKS ON BĀBUR’S REVENUE LIST (fol. 292)

a. Concerning the date of the List.

The Revenue List is the last item of Bābur’s account of Hindūstān and, with that account, is found s. a. 932 AH., manifestly too early, (1) because it includes districts and their revenues which did not come under Bābur’s authority until subdued in his Eastern campaigns of 934 and 935 AH., (2) because Bābur’s statement is that the “countries” of the List “are now in my possession” (in loco p. 520).

The List appears to be one of revenues realized in 936 or 937 AH. and not one of assessment or estimated revenue, (1) because Bābur’s wording states as a fact that the revenue was 52 krūrs; (2) because the Persian heading of the (Persian) List is translatable as “Revenue (jama‘)2815 of Hindūstān from what has so far come under the victorious standards”.

b. The entry of the List into European Literature.

Readers of the L. and E. Memoirs of Bābur are aware that it does not contain the Revenue List (p. 334). The omission is due to the absence of the List from the Elphinstone Codex and from the ‘Abdu’r-raḥīm Persian translation. Since the Memoirs of Bābur was published in 1826 AD., the List has come from the Bābur-nāma into European literature by three channels.

Of the three the one used earliest is Shaikh Zain’s T̤abaqāt-i-bāburī which is a Persian paraphrase of part of Bābur’s Hindūstān section. This work provided Mr. Erskine with what he placed in his History of India (London 1854, i, 540, Appendix D), but his manuscript, now B.M. Add. 26,202, is not the best copy of Shaikh Zain’s book, being of far less importance than B.M. Or. 1999, [as to which more will be said.]2816

The second channel is Dr. Ilminsky’s imprint of the Turkī text (Kāsān 1857, p. 379), which is translated by the Mémoires de Bāber (Paris 1871, ii, 230).

The third channel is the Ḥaidarābād Codex, in the English translation of which [in loco] the List is on p. 521.

Shaikh Zain may have used Bābur’s autograph manuscript for his paraphrase and with it the Revenue List. His own autograph manuscript was copied in 998 AH. (1589-90 AD.) by Khwānd-amīr’s grandson ‘Abdu’l-lāh who may be the scribe “Mīr ‘Abdu’l-lāh” of the Āyīn-i-akbarī (Blochmann’s trs. p. 109). ‘Abdu’l-lāh’s transcript (from which a portion is now absent,) after having been in Sir Henry Elliot’s possession, has become B.M. Or. 1999. It is noticed briefly by Professor Dowson (l. c. iv, 288), but he cannot have observed that the “old, worm-eaten” little volume contains Bābur’s Revenue List, since he does not refer to it.

c. Agreement and variation in copies of the List.

The figures in the two copies (Or. 1999 and Add. 26,202) of the T̤abaqāt-i-bāburī are in close agreement. They differ, however, from those in the Ḥaidarābād Codex, not only in a negligible unit and a ten of tankas but in having 20,000 more tankas from Oudh and Baraich and 30 laks of tankas more from Trans-sutlej.

The figures in the two copies of the Bābur-nāma, viz. the Ḥaidarābād Codex and the Kehr-Ilminsky imprint are not in agreement throughout, but are identical in opposition to the variants (20,000 t. and 30 l.) mentioned above. As the two are independent, being collateral descendants of Bābur’s original papers, the authority of the Ḥaidarābād Codex in the matter of the List is still further enhanced.

d. Varia.

(1) The place-names of the List are all traceable, whatever their varied forms. About the entry L: knū [or L: knūr] and B: ks: r [or M: ks: r] a difficulty has been created by its variation in manuscripts, not only in the List but where the first name occurs s. a. 934 and 935 AH. In the Ḥaidarābād List and in that of Or. 1999 L: knūr is clearly written and may represent (approximately) modern Shahābād in Rāmpūr. Erskine and de Courteille, however, have taken it to be Lakhnau in Oudh. [The distinction of Lakhnaur from Lakhnau in the historical narrative is discussed in Appendix T.]

(2) It may be noted, as of interest, that the name Sarwār is an abbreviation of Sarjūpār which means “other side of Sarjū” (Sarū, Goghrā; E. and D.’s H. of I. i, 56, n.4).

(3) Rūp-narā[: i]n (Deo or Dev) is mentioned in Ajodhya Prasad’s short history of Tirhut and Darbhanga, the Gulzār-i-Bihār (Calcutta 1869, Cap. v, 88) as the 9th of the Brahman rulers of Tirhut and as having reigned for 25 years, from 917 to 942 Faslī(?). If the years were Ḥijrī, 917-42 AH. would be 1511-1535.2817

(4) Concerning the tanka the following modern description is quoted from Mr. R. Shaw’s High Tartary (London 1871, p. 464) “The tanga” (or tanka) “is a nominal coin, being composed of 25 little copper cash, with holes pierced in them and called dahcheen. These are strung together and the quantity of them required to make up the value of one of these silver ingots” (“kooroos or yamboo, value nearly £17”) “weighs a considerable amount. I once sent to get change for a kooroos, and my servants were obliged to charter a donkey to bring it home.”

(5) The following interesting feature of Shaikh Zain’s T̤abaqāt-i-bāburī has been mentioned to me by my husband: – Its author occasionally reproduces Bābur’s Turkī words instead of paraphrasing them in Persian, and does this for the noticeable passage in which Bābur records his dissatisfied view of Hindūstān (f. 290b, in loco p. 518), prefacing his quotation with the remark that it is best and will be nearest to accuracy not to attempt translation but to reproduce the Pādshāh’s own words. The main interest of the matter lies in the motive for reproducing the ipsissima verba. Was that motive deferential? Did the revelation of feeling and opinion made in the quoted passage clothe it with privacy so that Shaikh Zain reserved its perusal from the larger public of Hindūstān who might read Persian but not Turkī? Some such motive would explain the insertion untranslated of Bābur’s letters to Humāyūn and to Khwāja Kalān which are left in Turkī by ‘Abdu’r-raḥīm Mīrzā.2818

Q. – CONCERNING THE “RĀMPŪR DĪWĀN”

Pending the wide research work necessary to interpret Bābur’s Hindūstān poems which the Rāmpūr manuscript preserves, the following comments, some tentative and open to correction, may carry further in making the poems publicly known, what Dr. E. Denison Ross has effected by publishing his Facsimile of the manuscript.2819 It is legitimate to associate comment on the poems with the Bābur-nāma because many of them are in it with their context of narrative; most, if not all, connect with it; some without it, would be dull and vapid.

a. An authorized English title.

The contents of the Rāmpūr MS. are precisely what Bābur describes sending to four persons some three weeks after the date attached to the manuscript,2820 viz. “the Translation and whatnot of poems made on coming to Hindūstān”;2821 and a similar description may be meant in the curiously phrased first clause of the colophon, but without mention of the Translation (of the Wālidiyyah-risāla).2822 Hence, if the poems, including the Translation, became known as the Hindūstān Poems or Poems made in Hindūstān, such title would be justified by their author’s words. Bābur does not call the Hindūstān poems a dīwān even when, as in the above quotation, he speaks of them apart from his versified translation of the Tract. In what has come down to us of his autobiography, he applies the name Dīwān to poems of his own once only, this in 925 AH. (f. 237b) when he records sending “my dīwān” to Pūlād Sl. Aūzbeg.

b. The contents of the Rāmpūr MS.

There are three separate items of composition in the manuscript, marked as distinct from one another by having each its ornamented frontispiece, each its scribe’s sign (mīm) of Finis, each its division from its neighbour by a space without entry. The first and second sections bear also the official sign [ṣaḥḥ] that the copy has been inspected and found correct.

(1) The first section consists of Bābur’s metrical translation of Khwāja ‘Ubaidu’l-lāh Aḥrārī’s Parental Tract (Wālidiyyah-risāla), his prologue in which are his reasons for versifying the Tract and his epilogue which gives thanks for accomplishing the task. It ends with the date 935 (Ḥai. MS. f. 346). Below this are mīm and ṣaḥḥ, the latter twice; they are in the scribe’s handwriting, and thus make against supposing that Bābur wrote down this copy of the Tract or its archetype from which the official ṣaḥḥ will have been copied. Moreover, spite of bearing two vouchers of being a correct copy, the Translation is emended, in a larger script which may be that of the writer of the marginal quatrain on the last page of the [Rāmpūr] MS. and there attested by Shāh-i-jahān as Bābur’s autograph entry. His also may have been the now expunged writing on the half-page left empty of text at the end of the Tract. Expunged though it be, fragments of words are visible.2823

(2) The second section has in its frontispiece an inscription illegible (to me) in the Facsimile. It opens with a masnawī of 41 couplets which is followed by a ghazel and numerous poems in several measures, down to a triad of rhymed couplets (matla‘?), the whole answering to descriptions of a Dīwān without formal arrangement. After the last couplet are mīm and ṣaḥḥ in the scribe’s hand-writing, and a blank quarter-page. Mistakes in this section have been left uncorrected, which supports the view that its ṣaḥḥ avouches the accuracy of its archetype and not its own.2824

(3) The third section shows no inscription on its frontispiece. It opens with the masnawī of eight couplets, found also in the Bābur-nāma (f. 312), one of earlier date than many of the poems in the second section. It is followed by three rubā‘ī which complete the collection of poems made in Hindūstān. A prose passage comes next, describing the composition and transposition-in-metre of a couplet of 16 feet, with examples in three measures, the last of which ends in l. 4 of the photograph. – While fixing the date of this metrical game, Bābur incidentally allows that of his Treatise on Prosody to be inferred from the following allusive words: – “When going to Saṃbhal (f. 330b) in the year (933 AH.) after the conquest of Hindūstān (932 AH.), two years after writing the ‘Arūẓ, I composed a couplet of 16 feet.” – From this the date of the Treatise is seen to be 931 AH., some two years later than that of the Mubīn. The above metrical exercise was done about the same time as another concerning which a Treatise was written, viz. that mentioned on f. 330b, when a couplet was transposed into 504 measures (Section f, p. lxv). – The Facsimile, it will be noticed, shows something unusual in the last line of the prose passage on Plate XVIII B, where the scattering of the words suggests that the scribe was trying to copy page per page.

The colophon (which begins on l. 5 of the photograph) is curiously worded, as though the frequent fate of last pages had befallen its archetype, that of being mutilated and difficult for a scribe to make good; it suggests too that the archetype was verse.2825 Its first clause, even if read as Hind-stān jānibī ‘azīmat qīlghānī (i.e. not qīlghālī, as it can be read), has an indirectness unlike Bābur’s corresponding “after coming to Hindūstān” (f. 357b), and is not definite; (2) bū aīrdī (these were) is not the complement suiting aūl dūrūr (those are); (3) Bābur does not use the form dūrūr in prose; (4) the undue space after dūrūr suggests connection with verse; (5) there is no final verb such as prose needs. The meaning, however, may be as follows: – The poems made after resolving on (the) Hindūstān parts (jānibī?) were these I have written down (taḥrīr qīldīm), and past events are those I have narrated (taqrīr) in the way that (nī-chūk kīm) (has been) written in these folios (aūrāq) and recorded in those sections (ajzā'). – From this it would appear that sections of the Bābur-nāma (f. 376b, p. 678) accompanied the Hindūstān poems to the recipient of the message conveyed by the colophon.

Close under the colophon stands Ḥarara-hu Bābur and the date Monday, Rabī‘ II. 15th 935 (Monday, December 27th 1528 AD.), the whole presumably brought over from the archetype. To the question whether a signature in the above form would be copied by a scribe, the Elphinstone Codex gives an affirmative answer by providing several examples of notes, made by Humāyūn in its archetype, so-signed and brought over either into its margin or interpolated in its text. Some others of Humāyūn’s notes are not so-signed, the scribe merely saying they are Humāyūn Pādshāh’s. – It makes against taking the above entry of Bābur’s name to be an autograph signature, (1) that it is enclosed in an ornamented border, as indeed is the case wherever it occurs throughout the manuscript; (2) that it is followed by the scribe’s mīm. [See end of following section.]

c. The marginal entries shown in the photograph.

The marginal note written length-wise by the side of the text is signed by Shāh-i-jahān and attests that the rubā‘ī and the signature to which it makes reference are in Bābur’s autograph hand-writing. His note translates as follows: – This quatrain and blessed name are in the actual hand-writing of that Majesty (ān ḥaẓrat) Firdaus-makānī Bābur Pādshāh Ghāzī– May God make his proof clear! – Signed (Ḥararā-hu), Shāh-i-jahān son of Jahāngīr Pādshāh son of Akbar Pādshāh son of Humāyūn Pādshāh son of Bābur Pādshāh.2826

The second marginal entry is the curiously placed rubā‘ī, which is now the only one on the page, and now has no signature attaching to it. It has the character of a personal message to the recipient of one of more books having identical contents. That these two entries are there while the text seems so clearly to be written by a scribe, is open to the explanation that when (as said about the colophon, p. lx) the rectangle of text was made good from a mutilated archetype, the original margin was placed round the rifacimento? This superposition would explain the entries and seal-like circles, discernible against a strong light, on the reverse of the margin only, through the rifacimento page. The upper edge of the rectangle shows sign that the margin has been adjusted to it [so far as one can judge from a photograph]. Nothing on the face of the margin hints that the text itself is autograph; the words of the colophon, taḥrīr qīldīm (i. e. I have written down) cannot hold good against the cumulative testimony that a scribe copied the whole manuscript. – The position of the last syllable [nī] of the rubā‘ī shows that the signature below the colophon was on the margin before the diagonal couplet of the rubā‘ī was written, – therefore when the margin was fitted, as it looks to have been fitted, to the rifacimento. If this be the order of the two entries [i. e. the small-hand signature and the diagonal couplet], Shāh-i-jahān’s “blessed name” may represent the small-hand signature which certainly shows minute differences from the writing of the text of the MS. in the name Bābur (q. v. passim in the Rāmpūr MS.).