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‘)[2822] 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.][2823]
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.