LITMIR.BIZ

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target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#n21" type="note">21 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-nāma) – 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).22

      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,23 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.24 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;25 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

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