The Bābur-nāma in English (Memoirs of Bābur)

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.]

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.2833

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.).

So early as 910 AH. the year of his conquest of Kābul, Bābur devised what was probably a variety of nakhsh, and called it the Bāburī-khat̤t̤ (f. 144b), a name used later by Ḥaidar Mīrzā, Niz̤āmu’d-dīn Aḥmad and ‘Abdu’l-qādir Badāyūnī. He writes of it again (f. 179) s.a. 911 AH. when describing an interview had in 912 AH. with one of the Harāt Qāẓīs, at which the script was discussed, its specialities (mufradāt) exhibited to, and read by the Qāẓī who there and then wrote in it.2834 In what remains to us of the Bābur-nāma it is not mentioned again till 935 AH. (fol. 357b) but at some intermediate date Bābur made in it a copy of the Qorān which he sent to Makka.2835 In 935 AH. (f. 357b) it is mentioned in significant association with the despatch to each of four persons of a copy of the Translation (of the Wālidiyyah-risāla) and the Hindūstān poems, the significance of the association being that the simultaneous despatch with these copies of specimens of the Bāburī-khat̤t̤ points to its use in the manuscripts, and at least in Hind-āl’s case, to help given for reading novel forms in their text. The above are the only instances now found in the Bābur-nāma of mention of the script.

sīghnāq lend themselves to the kind of pun (īhām) “which consists in the employment of a word or phrase having more than one appropriate meaning, whereby the reader is often left in doubt as to the real significance of the passage.”2837 The rest of the rubā‘ī may be given [together with the six other quotations of Bābur’s verse now known only through the Abūshqa], in early Taẕkirātu ‘sh-shu‘āra of date earlier than 967 AH.

The root of the word sīghnāq will be sīq, pressed together, crowded, included, etc.; taking with this notion of compression, the explanations feine Schrift of Shaikh Effendi (Kunos) and Vambéry’s pétite écriture, the Sīghnāqī and Bāburī Scripts are allowed to have been what that of the Rāmpūr MS. is, a small, compact, elegant hand-writing.—A town in the Caucasus named Sīghnākh, “située à peu près à 800 mètres d’altitude, commença par être une forteresse et un lieu de refuge, car telle est la signification de son nom tartare.”2838 Sīghnāqī is given by de Courteille (Dict. p. 368) as meaning a place of refuge or shelter.

Though only those well-acquainted with Oriental manuscripts dating before 910 AH. (1504 AD.) can judge whether novelties appear in the script of the Rāmpūr MS. and this particularly in its head-lines, there are certain grounds for thinking that though the manuscript be not Bābur’s autograph, it may be in his script and the work of a specially trained scribe.

I set these grounds down because although the signs of a scribe’s work on the manuscript seem clear, it is “locally” held to be Bābur’s autograph. Has a tradition of its being in the Bāburī-khat̤t̤ glided into its being in the khat̤t̤-i-Bābur? Several circumstances suggest that it may be written in the Bāburī-khat̤t̤:—(1) the script is specially associated with the four transcripts of the Hindūstān poems (f. 357b), for though many letters must have gone to his sons, some indeed are mentioned in the Bābur-nāma, it is only with the poems that specimens of it are recorded as sent; (2) another matter shows his personal interest in the arrangement of manuscripts, namely, that as he himself about a month after the four books had gone off, made a new ruler, particularly on account of the head-lines of the Translation, it may be inferred that he had made or had adopted the one he superseded, and that his plan of arranging the poems was the model for copyists; the Rāmpūr MS. bearing, in the Translation section, corrections which may be his own, bears also a date earlier than that at which the four gifts started; it has its headlines ill-arranged and has throughout 13 lines to the page; his new ruler had 11; (3) perhaps the words taḥrīr qīldīm used in the colophon of the Rāmpūr MS. should be read with their full connotation of careful and elegant writing, or, put modestly, as saying, “I wrote down in my best manner,” which for poems is likely to be in the Bāburī-khat̤t̤.2839

Perhaps an example of Bābur’s script exists in the colophon, if not in the whole of the Mubīn manuscript once owned by Berézine, by him used for his Chréstomathie Turque, and described by him as “unique”. If this be the actual manuscript Bābur sent into Mā warā’u’n-nahr (presumably to Khwāja Aḥrārī’s family), its colophon which is a personal message addressed to the recipients, is likely to be autograph.

(1) Of two instances of metrical amusements belonging to the end of 933 AH. and seeming to have been the distractions of illness, one is a simple transposition “in the fashion of the circles” (dawā’ir) into three measures (Rāmpūr MS. Facsimile, Plate XVIII and p. 22); the other is difficult because of the high number of 504 into which Bābur says (f. 330b) he cut up the following couplet:—

All manuscripts agree in having 504, and Bābur wrote a tract (risāla) upon the transpositions.2840 None of the modern treatises on Oriental Prosody allow a number so high to be practicable, but Maulānā Saifī of Bukhārā, of Bābur’s own time (f. 180b) makes 504 seem even moderate, since after giving much detail about rubā‘ī measures, he observes, “Some say there are 10,000” (Arūẓ-i-Saifī, Ranking’s trs. p. 122). Presumably similar possibilities were open for the couplet in question. It looks like one made for the game, asks two foolish questions and gives no reply, lends itself to poetic license, and, if permutation of words have part in such a game, allows much without change of sense. Was Bābur’s cessation of effort at 504 capricious or enforced by the exhaustion of possible changes? Is the arithmetical statement 9 × 8 × 7 = 504 the formula of the practicable permutations?

(2) To improvise verse having a given rhyme and topic must have demanded quick wits and much practice. Bābur gives at least one example of it (f. 252b) but Jahāngīr gives a fuller and more interesting one, not only because a rubā‘ī of Bābur’s was the model but from the circumstances of the game:2841—It was in 1024 AH. (1615 AD.) that a letter reached him from Māwarā’u’n-nahr written by Khwāja Hāshim Naqsh-bandī [who by the story is shown to have been of Aḥrārī’s line], and recounting the long devotion of his family to Jahāngīr’s ancestors. He sent gifts and enclosed in his letter a copy of one of Bābur’s quatrains which he said Ḥaẓrat Firdaus-makānī had written for Ḥaẓrat Khwājagī (Aḥrārī’s eldest son; f. 36b, p. 62 n. 2). Jahāngīr quotes a final hemistich only, “Khwājagīra mānda’īm, Khwājagīrā banda’īm” and thereafter made an impromptu verse upon the one sent to him.

A curious thing is that the line he quotes is not part of the quatrain he answered, but belongs to another not appropriate for a message between darwesh and pādshāh, though likely to have been sent by Bābur to Khwājagī. I will quote both because the matter will come up again for who works on the Hindūstān poems.2842

The greater suitability of the second is seen from Jahāngīr’s answering impromptu for which by sense and rhyme it sets the model; the meaning, however, of the fourth line in each may be identical, namely, “I remain the ruler but am the servant of the darwesh.” Jahāngīr’s impromptu is as follows:—