“Alas! that time and the changeful heaven should exist without thee;
Alas! and Alas! that time should remain and thou shouldst be gone;”
mourns Khwāja Kalān in the funeral ode from which Badāyūnī quoted these lines.[2738]
The body was laid in the Garden-of-rest (Ārām-bāgh) which is opposite to where the Tāj-i-maḥāll now stands. Khwāja Muḥammad ‘Alī ‘asas[2739] was made the guardian of the tomb, and many well-voiced readers and reciters were appointed to conduct the five daily Prayers and to offer supplication for the soul of the dead. The revenues of Sīkrī and 5 laks from Bīāna were set aside for the endowment of the tomb, and Māhīm Begīm, during the two and a half years of her remaining life, sent twice daily from her own estate, an allowance of food towards the support of its attendants.
In accordance with the directions of his will, Bābur’s body was to be conveyed to Kābul and there to be laid in the garden of his choice, in a grave open to the sky, with no building over it, no need of a door-keeper.
Precisely when it was removed from Āgra we have not found stated. It is known from Gul-badan that Kāmrān visited his Father’s tomb in Āgra in 1539 AD. (946 AH.) after the battle of Chausa; and it is known from Jauhar that the body had been brought to Kābul before 1544 AD. (952 AH.), at which date Humāyūn, in Kābul, spoke with displeasure of Kāmrān’s incivility to “Bega Begīm”, the “Bībī” who had conveyed their Father’s body to that place.[2740] That the widow who performed this duty was the Afghān Lady, Bībī Mubārika[2741] is made probable by Gul-badan’s details of the movements of the royal ladies. Bābur’s family left Āgra under Hind-āl’s escort, after the defeat at Chausa (June 7th, 1539 AD.); whoever took charge of the body on its journey to Kābul must have returned at some later date to fetch it. It would be in harmony with Sher Shāh’s generous character if he safe-guarded her in her task.
The terraced garden Bābur chose for his burial-place lies on the slope of the hill Shāh-i-Kābul, the Sher-darwāza of European writers.[2742] It has been described as perhaps the most beautiful of the Kābul gardens, and as looking towards an unsurpassable view over the Chār-dih plain towards the snows of Paghmān and the barren, rocky hills which have been the hunting-grounds of rulers in Kābul. Several of Bābur’s descendants coming to Kābul from Āgra have visited and embellished his burial-garden. Shāh-i-jahān built the beautiful mosque which stands near the grave; Jahāngīr seems to have been, if not the author, at least the prompter of the well-cut inscription adorning the upright slab of white marble of Māīdān, which now stands at the grave-head. The tomb-stone itself is a low grave-covering, not less simple than those of relations and kin whose remains have been placed near Bābur’s. In the thirties of the last century [the later Sir] Alexander Burnes visited and admirably described the garden and the tomb. With him was Munshī Mohan Lāl who added to his own account of the beauties of the spot, copies of the inscriptions on the monumental slab and on the portal of the Mosque.[2743] As is shown by the descriptions these two visitors give, and by Daniel’s drawings of the garden and the tomb, there were in their time two upright slabs, one behind the other, near the head of the grave. Mr. H. H. Hayden who visited the garden in the first decade of the present century, shows in his photograph of the grave, one upright stone only, the place of one of the former two having been taken by a white-washed lamp holder (chirāghdān).
The purport of the verses inscribed on the standing-slab is as follows:—
A ruler from whose brow shone the Light of God was that[2744] Back-bone of the Faith (z̤ahīru’d-dīn) Muḥammad Bābur Pādshāh. Together with majesty, dominion, fortune, rectitude, the open-hand and the firm Faith, he had share in prosperity, abundance and the triumph of victorious arms. He won the material world and became a moving light; for his every conquest he looked, as for Light, towards the world of souls. When Paradise became his dwelling and Ruẓwān[2745] asked me the date, I gave him for answer, “Paradise is forever Bābur Pādshāh’s abode.”
h. Bābur’s wives and children.[2746]