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]
(1) The quatrain from the Hindūstān Poems is:—
Dar hawā’ī nafs gumrah ‘umr ẓāi‘ karda’īm [kanda’īm?];
Pesh ahl-i-allāh az af‘āl-i-khūd sharmanda’īm;
Yak naz̤r bā mukhlaṣān-i-khasta-dil farmā ki mā
Khwājagīrā mānda’īm u Khwājagīrā banda’īm.
(2) That from the Akbar-nāma is:—
Darweshānrā agarcha nah as khweshānīm,