[26] But for present difficulties of intercourse with Petrograd, I would have re-examined with Kehr’s the collateral Codex of 1742 (copied in 1839 and now owned by the Petrograd University). It might be useful; as Kehr’s volume has lost pages and may be disarranged here and there.
The list of Kehr’s items is as follows:—
1 (not in the Imprint). A letter from Babur to Kamran the date of which is fixed as 1527 by its committing Ibrahim Ludi’s son to Kamran’s charge (p. 544). It is heard of again in the Bukhara Compilation, is lost from Kehr’s Codex, and preserved from his archetype by Klaproth who translated it. Being thus found in Bukhara in the first decade of the eighteenth century (our earliest knowledge of the Compilation is 1709), the inference is allowed that it went to Bukhara as loot from the defeated Kamran’s camp and that an endorsement its companion Babur-nama (proper) bears was made by the Auzbeg of two victors over Kamran, both of 1550, both in Tramontana.[27]
2 (not in Imp.). Timur-pulad’s memo. about the purchase of his Codex in cir. 1521 (eo cap. post).
3 (Imp. 1). Compiler’s Preface of Praise (JRAS. 1900, p. 474).
4 (Imp. 2). Babur’s Acts in Farghana, in diction such as to seem a re-translation of the Persian translation of 1589. How much of Kamran’s MS. was serviceable is not easy to decide, because the Turki fettering of ‘Abdu’r-rahim’s Persian lends itself admirably to re-translation.[28]
5 (Imp. 3). The “Rescue-passage” (App. D) attributable to Jahangir.
6 (Imp. 4). Babur’s Acts in Kabul, seeming (like No. 4) a re-translation or patching of tattered pages. There are also passages taken verbatim from the Persian.
7 (Imp. omits). A short length of Babur’s Hindustan Section, carefully shewn damaged by dots and dashes.
8 (Imp. 5). Within 7, the spurious passage of App. L and also scattered passages about a feast, perhaps part of 7.