The Bāburī-khat̤t̤ will be only one of the several hands Bābur is reputed to have practised; its description matches it with other niceties he took pleasure in, fine distinctions of eye and ear in measure and music.
e. Is the Rāmpūr MS. an example of the Bāburī-khat̤t̤?
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on account of the head-lines of the Translation, it may be inferred that he had made or had adopted the one he superseded, and that his plan of arranging the poems was the model for copyists; the Rāmpūr MS.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.
f. Metrical amusements.
(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:—
Gūz u qāsh u soz u tīlīnī mū dī?
Qad u khadd u saj u bīlīnī mū dī?