APPENDICES.
A.—THE SITE AND DISAPPEARANCE OF OLD AKHSĪ.
Some modern writers, amongst whom are Dr. Schuyler, General Nalivkine and Mr. Pumpelly, have inferred from the Bābur-nāma account of Akhsī, (in its translations?) that the landslip through which Bābur’s father died and the disappearance of old Akhsī were brought about by erosion. Seen by the light of modern information, this erosion theory does not seem to cover the whole ground and some other cause seems necessary in explanation of both events.
For convenience of reference, the Bābur-nāma passages required, are quoted here, with their translations.
Ḥai. MS. f. 4b. Saiḥūn daryā-sī qūrghānī astīdīn āqār. Qūrghānī baland jar austīdā wāqī’ būlūb tūr. Khandaqī-nīng aūrunīgha ‘umīq jārlār dūr. ‘Umar Shaikh M. kīm mūnī pāy-takht qīldī, bīr īkī martaba tāshrāq-dīn yana jarlār sāldī.
Of this the translations are as follows:—
(a) Pers. trans. (I.O. 217, f. 3b): Daryā-i Saiḥūn az pāyhā qila‘-i o mīrezad u qila‘-i o bar jar balandī wāqi‘ shuda ba jāy khandaq jarhā-i ‘umīq uftāda. ‘U. Sh. M. kah ānrā pāy-takht sākhta, yak du martaba az bīrūn ham bāz jarhā andākht.
(b) Erskine (p. 5, translating from the Persian): ‘The river Saiḥūn flows under the walls of the castle. The castle is situated on a high precipice, and the steep ravines around serve instead of a moat. When U. Sh. M. made it his capital he, in one or two instances, scarped the ravines outside the fort.’
(c) De Courteille (i, 8, translating from Ilminsky’s imprint, p. 6): ‘Le Seihoun coule au pied de la fortresse qui se dresse sur le sommet d’un ravin, dont les profondeurs lui tiennent lieu d’un fossé. ‘U. Sh. M. à l'époque où il en avait fait son capitale, avait augmenté à une ou deux réprises, les escarpements qui la ceignent naturellement.’
Concerning ‘Umar Shaikh’s death, the words needed are (f. 6b);—
Maẕkūr būlūb aīdī kīm Akhsī qūrghānī buland jar austīdā wāqi‘ būlūb tūr. ‘Imāratlār jar yāqāsīdā aīrdī.... Mīrzā jardīn kabūtar u kabūtar-khāna bīla aūchūb shunqār būldī;—'It has been mentioned that the walled-town of Akhsī is situated above ravine(s). The royal dwellings are along a ravine. The Mīrzā, having flown with his pigeons and their house from the ravine, became a falcon (i.e. died).’
A few particulars about Akhsī will shew that, in the translations just quoted, certain small changes of wording are dictated by what, amongst other writers, Kostenko and von Schwarz have written about the oases of Turkistān.
The name Akhsī, as used by Ibn Haukal, Yāqūt and Bābur, describes an oasis township, i.e. a walled-town with its adjacent cultivated lands. In Yāqūt’s time Akhsī had a second circumvallation, presumably less for defence than for the protection of crops against wild animals. The oasis was created by the Kāsān-water,[2750] upon the riverain loess of the right and higher bank of the Saiḥūn (Sīr), on level ground west of the junction of the Nārīn and the Qarā-daryā, west too of spurs from the northern hills which now abut upon the river. Yāqūt locates it in the 12th century, at one farsākh (circa 4 m.) north of the river.[2751] Depending as it did solely on the Kāsān-water, nothing dictated its location close to the Sīr, along which there is now, and there seems to have been in the 12th century, a strip of waste land. Bābur says of Akhsī what Kostenko says (i, 321) of modern Tāshkīnt, that it stood above ravines (jarlār). These were natural or artificial channels of the Kāsān-water.[2752]
To turn now to the translations;—Mr. Erskine imaged Akhsī as a castle, high on a precipice in process of erosion by the Sīr. But Bābur’s word, qūrghān means the walled-town; his word for a castle is ark, citadel; and his jar, a cleft, is not rendered by ‘precipice.’ Again;—it is no more necessary to understand that the Sīr flowed close to the walls than it is to understand, when one says the Thames flows past below Richmond, that it washes the houses on the hill.
The key to the difficulties in the Turkī passage is provided by a special use of the word jar for not only natural ravines but artificial water-cuts for irrigation. This use of it makes clear that what ‘Umar Shaikh did at Akhsī was not to make escarpments but to cut new water-channels. Presumably he joined those ‘further out’ on the deltaic fan, on the east and west of the town, so as to secure a continuous defensive cleft round the town[2753] or it may be, in order to bring it more water.
Concerning the historic pigeon-house (f. 6b), it can be said safely that it did not fall into the Sīr; it fell from a jar, and in this part of its course, the river flows in a broad bed, with a low left bank. Moreover the Mīrzā’s residence was in the walled-town (f. 110b) and there his son stayed 9 years after the accident. The slip did not affect the safety of the residence therefore; it may have been local to the birds’ house. It will have been due to some ordinary circumstance since no cause for it is mentioned by Bābur, Ḥaidar or Abū’l-faẓl. If it had marked the crisis of the Sīr’s approach, Akhsī could hardly have been described, 25 years later, as a strong fort.
Something is known of Akhsī, in the 10th, the 12th, the 15th and the 19th centuries, which testifies to sæcular decadence. Ibn Haukal and Yāqūt give the township an extent of 3 farsākh (12 miles), which may mean from one side to an opposite one. Yāqūt’s description of it mentions four gates, each opening into well-watered lands extending a whole farsākh, in other words it had a ring of garden-suburb four miles wide.
Two meanings have been given to Bābur’s words indicating the status of the oasis in the 15th century. They are, maḥallātī qūrghān-dīn bīr shar‘ī yurāqrāq tūshūb tūr. They have been understood as saying that the suburbs were two miles from their urbs. This may be right but I hesitate to accept it without pointing out that the words may mean, ‘Its suburbs extend two miles farther than the walled-town.’ Whichever verbal reading is correct, reveals a decayed oasis.
In the 19th century, Nalivkine and Ujfalvy describe the place then bearing the name Akhsī, as a small village, a mere winter-station, at some distance from the river’s bank, that bank then protected from denudation by a sand-bank.
Three distinctly-marked stages of decadence in the oasis township are thus indicated by Yāqūt, Bābur and the two modern travellers.
It is necessary to say something further about the position of the suburbs in the 15th century. Bābur quotes as especially suitable to Akhsī, the proverbial questions, ‘Where is the village?'[2754] (qy. Akhsī-kīnt.) ‘Where are the trees?’ and these might be asked by some-one in the suburbs unable to see Akhsī or vice versâ. But granting that there were no suburbs within two miles of the town, why had the whole inner circle, two miles of Yāqūt’s four, gone out of cultivation? Erosion would have affected only land between the river and the town.
Again;—if the Sīr only were working in the 15th century to destroy a town standing on the Kāsān-water, how is it that this stream does not yet reach the Sīr?
Various ingatherings of information create the impression that failure of Kāsān-water has been the dominant factor in the loss of the Akhsī township. Such failure might be due to the general desiccation of Central Asia and also to increase of cultivation in the Kāsān-valley itself. There may have been erosion, and social and military change may have had its part, but for the loss of the oasis lands and for, as a sequel, the decay of the town, desiccation seems a sufficient cause.
The Kāsān-water still supports an oasis on its riverain slope, the large Aūzbeg town of Tūpa-qūrghān (Town-of-the-hill), from the modern castle of which a superb view is had up the Kāsān-valley, now thickly studded with villages.[2755]
B.—THE BIRDS, QĪL QŪYIRŪGH AND BĀGHRĪ QARĀ.
Describing a small bird (qūsh-qīna), abundant in the Qarshī district (f. 49b), Bābur names it the qīl-qūyirūgh, horse-tail, and says it resembles the bāghrī qarā.
Later on he writes (f. 280) that the bāghrī qarā of India is smaller and more slender than ‘those’ i.e. of Transoxiana (f. 49b, n. 1), the blackness of its breast less deep, and its cry less piercing.
We have had difficulty in identifying the birds but at length conclude that the bāghrī qarā of Transoxiana is Pterocles arenarius, Pallas’s black-bellied sand-grouse and that the Indian one is a smaller sand-grouse, perhaps a Syrrhaptes. As the qīl qūyirūgh resembles the other two, it may be a yet smaller Syrrhaptes.
Muḥ. Ṣāliḥ, writing of sport Shaibāq Khān had in Qarshī (Shaibānī-nāma, Vambéry, p. 192) mentions the ‘Little bird (murghak) of Qarshī,’ as on all sides making lament. The Sang-lākh[2756] gives its Persian name as khar-pala, ass-hair, says it flies in large flocks and resembles the bāghrī qarā. Of the latter he writes as abundant in the open country and as making noise (bāghīr).
The Sang-lākh (f. 119) gives the earliest and most informing account we have found of the bāghrī qarā. Its says the bird is larger than a pigeon, marked with various colours, yellow especially, black-breasted and a dweller in the stony and waterless desert. These details are followed by a quotation from ‘Alī-sher Nawā’ī, in which he likens his own heart to that of the bird of the desert, presumably referring to the gloom of the bird’s plumage. Three synonyms are then given; Ar. qit̤ā, one due to its cry (Meninsky); Pers. sang-shikan, stone-eating, (Steingass, sang-khwāra, stone-eating); and Turkī bāghīr-tīlāq which refers, I think, to its cry.
Morier (Ḥājī Bābā) in his Second journey through Persia (Lond. 1818, p. 181), mentions that a bird he calls the black-breasted partridge, (i.e. Francolinus vulgaris) is known in Turkish as bokara kara and in Persian as siyāh-sīna, both names, (he says), meaning black-breast; that it has a horse-shoe of black feathers round the forepart of the trunk, more strongly marked in the female than in the male; that they fly in flocks of which he saw immense numbers near Tabrīz (p. 283), have a soft note, inhabit the plains, and, once settled, do not run. Cock and hen alike have a small spur,—a characteristic, it may be said, identifying rather with Francolinus vulgaris than with Pterocles arenarius. Against this identification, however, is Mr. Blandford’s statement that siyāh-sīna (Morier’s bokara kara) is Pterocles arenarius (Report of the Persian Boundary Commission, ii, 271).
In Afghānistān and Bikanir, the sand-grouse is called tūtūrak and boora kurra (Jerdon, ii, 498). Scully explains baghītāq as Pterocles arenarius.
Perhaps I may mention something making me doubt whether it is correct to translate bāghrī qarā by black-liver and gorge-noir or other names in which the same meaning is expressed. To translate thus, is to understand a Turkī noun and adjective in Persian construction, and to make exception to the rule, amply exemplified in lists of birds, that Turkī names of birds are commonly in Turkī construction, e.g. qarā bāsh (black-head), āq-bāsh (white-head), sārīgh-sūndūk (yellow-headed wagtail). Bāghīr may refer to the cry of the bird. We learn from Mr. Ogilvie Grant that the Mongol name for the sand-grouse njūpterjūn, is derived from its cry in flight, truck, truck, and its Arabic name qit̤ā is said by Meninsky to be derived from its cry kaetha, kaetha. Though the dissimilarity of the two cries is against taking the njūpterjūn and the qit̤ā to be of one class of sand-grouse, the significance of the derivation of the names remains, and shows that there are examples in support of thinking that when a sand-grouse is known as bāghrī qarā, it may be so known because of its cry (bāghir).
The word qarā finds suggestive interpretation in a B. N. phrase (f. 72b) Taṃbal-nīng qarā-sī, Taṃbal’s blackness, i.e. the dark mass of his moving men, seen at a distance. It is used also for an indefinite number, e.g. ‘family, servants, retainers, followers, qarā,’ and I think it may imply a massed flock.
Bābur’s words (f. 280) bāghrī-nīng qarā-sī ham kam dūr, [its belly (lit. liver) also is less black], do not necessarily contradict the view that the word bāghrī in the bird’s name means crying. The root bāgh has many and pliable derivatives; I suspect both Bābur (here) and Muḥ. Ṣāliḥ (l. c.) of ringing changes on words.
We are indebted for kind reply to our questions to Mr. Douglas Carruthers, Mr. Ogilvie Grant and to our friend, Mr. R. S. Whiteway.
C.—ON THE GOSHA-GĪR.
I am indebted to my husband’s examination of two Persian MSS. on archery for an explanation of the word gosha-gīr, in its technical sense in archery. The works consulted are the Cyclopædia of Archery (Kulliyatu’r-rāmī I. O. 2771) and the Archer’s Guide (Hidāyatu’r-rāmī I. O. 2768).
It should be premised that in archery, the word gosha describes, in the arrow, the notch by which it grips and can be carried on the string, and, in the bow, both the tip (horn) and the notch near the tip in which the string catches. It is explained by Vullers as cornu et crena arcûs cui immititur nervus.
Two passages in the Cyclopædia of Archery (f. 9 and f. 36b) shew gosha as the bow-tip. One says that to bend the bow, two men must grasp the two gosha; the other reports a tradition that the Archangel Gabriel brought a bow having its two gosha (tips) made of ruby. The same book directs that the gosha be made of seasoned ivory, the Archer’s Guide prescribing seasoned mulberry wood.
The C. of A. (f. 125b) says that a bowman should never be without two things, his arrows and his gosha-gīr. The gosha-gīr may be called an item of the repairing kit; it is an implement (f. 53) for making good a warped bow-tip and for holding the string into a displaced notch. It is known also as the chaprās, brooch or buckle, and the kardāng; and is said to bear these names because it fastens in the string. Its shape is that of the upper part of the Ar. letter jīm, two converging lines of which the lower curves slightly outward. It serves to make good a warped bow, without the use of fire and it should be kept upon the bow-tip till this has reverted to its original state. Until the warp has been straightened by the gosha-gīr, the bow must be kept from the action of fire because it, (composite of sinew and glutinous substance,) is of the nature of wax.
The same implement can be used to straighten the middle of the bow, the kamān khāna. It is then called kar-dāng. It can be used there on condition that there are not two daur (curves) in the bow. If there are two the bow cannot be repaired without fire. The halāl daur is said to be characteristic of the Turkish bow. There are three daur. I am indebted to Mr. Inigo Simon for the suggestions that daur in this connection means warp and that the three twists (daur) may be those of one horn (gosha), of the whole bow warped in one curve, and of the two horns warped in opposite directions.
Of repair to the kamān-khāna it is said further that if no kardāng be available, its work can be done by means of a stick and string, and if the damage be slight only, the bow and the string can be tightly tied together till the bow comes straight. ‘And the cure is with God!'
Both manuscripts named contain much technical information. Some parts of this are included in my husband’s article, Oriental Crossbows (A. Q. R. 1911, p. 1). Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey’s interesting book on the Cross-bow allows insight into the fine handicraft of Turkish bow-making.
D.—ON THE RESCUE PASSAGE.
I have omitted from my translation an account of Bābur’s rescue from expected death, although it is with the Ḥaidarābād Codex, because closer acquaintance with its details has led both my husband and myself to judge it spurious. We had welcomed it because, being with the true Bābur-nāma text, it accredited the same account found in the Kehr-Ilminsky text, and also because, however inefficiently, it did something towards filling the gap found elsewhere within 908 AH.
It is in the Ḥaidarābād MS. (f. 118b), in Kehr’s MS. (p. 385), in Ilminsky’s imprint (p. 144), in Les Mémoires de Bābour (i, 255) and with the St. P. University Codex, which is a copy of Kehr’s.
On the other hand, it is not with the Elphinstone Codex (f. 89b); that it was not with the archetype of that codex the scribe’s note shews (f. 90); it is with neither of the Wāqi‘āt-i-bāburī (Pers. translations) nor with Leyden and Erskine’s Memoirs (p. 122).[2757]
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.[2758] 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;[2759] 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.[2760] I am seeing[2761] 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).[2762] 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;[2763] 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 him[2764] were giving one another advice. ‘We will make a pretext to deceive; to seize and bind[2765] 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 wall[2766] 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,[2767] 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 pādshāh[2768] 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),[2769] 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.[2770]
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,[2771] 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.[2772]
[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.