(3) The “Fragment” begins with a quotation from the Bābur-nāma (f.310b and n.), skips a good deal of Bābur’s matter preliminary to the battle, and passes on with what there can be no doubt is a translation in inferior Turkī of the Akbar-nāma account.
(4) The whole of the extra matter is seen to be continuous and not fragmentary, if it is collated with the chapter in which Abū’l-faẓl describes the battle, its sequel of events, the death, character, attainments, and Court of Bābur. Down to the death, it is changed to the first person so as to make Bābur seem to write it. The probable concocter of it is Jahāngīr.
(5) If the Fragment were Bābur’s composition, where was it when ‘Abdu-r-raḥīm translated the Bābur-nāma in 998 AH.-1590 AD.; where too did Abū’l-faẓl find it to reproduce in the Akbar-nāma?
(6) The source of Abū’l-faẓl’s information seems without doubt to be Bābur’s own narrative and Shaikh Zain’s Fatḥ-nāma. There are many significant resemblances between the two rhetoricians’ metaphors and details selected.
(7) A good deal might be said of the dissimilarities between Bābur’s diction and that of the “Fragment”. But this is needless in face of the larger and more circumstantial objections already mentioned.
(For a fuller account of the “Fragment” see JRAS. Jan. 1906 pp. 81, 85 and 1908 p. 75 ff.)
[2112] T̤ughrā means an imperial signature also, but would Bābur sign Shaikh Zain’s Fatḥ-i-nāma? His autograph verse at the end of the Rāmpūr Dīwān has his signature following it. He is likely to have signed this verse. Cf. App. Q. [Erskine notes that titles were written on the back of despatches, an unlikely place for the quatrain, one surmises.]
[2113] This is in the Rāmpūr dīwān (E.D.R. Plate 17). Dr. E. Denison Ross points out (p. 17 n.) that in the 2nd line the Ḥai. Codex varies from the Dīwān. The MS. is wrong; it contains many inaccuracies in the latter part of the Hindūstān section, perhaps due to a change of scribe.
[2114] These words by abjad yield 933. From Bābur’s use of the pluperfect tense, I think it may be inferred that (my) Sections a and b are an attachment to the Fatḥ-nāma, entered with it at a somewhat later date.
[2115] My translation of this puzzling sentence is tentative only.