[2325] The Rashaḥāt-i-´aīnu’l-ḥayāt (Tricklings from the fountain of life) contains an interesting and almost contemporary account of the Khwāja and of his Wālidiyyah-risāla. A summary of what in it concerns the Khwāja can be read in the JRAS. Jan. 1916, H. Beveridge’s art. The tract, so far as we have searched, is now known in European literature only through Bābur’s metrical translation of it; and this, again, is known only through the Rāmpūr Dīwān. [It may be noted here, though the topic belongs to the beginning of the Bābur-nāma (f. 2), that the Rashaḥāt contains particulars about Aḥrārī’s interventions for peace between Bābur’s father ´Umar Shaikh and those with whom he quarrelled.]
[2326] “Here unfortunately, mr. Elphinstone’s Turki copy finally ends” (Erskine), that is to say, the Elphinstone Codex belonging to the Faculty of Advocates of Edinburgh.
[2327] This work, Al-buṣīrī’s famous poem in praise of the Prophet, has its most recent notice in M. René Basset’s article of the Encyclopædia of Islām (Leyden and London).
[2328] Bābur’s technical terms to describe the metre he used are, ramal musaddas makhbūn ´arūẓ and ẓarb gāh abtar gāh makhbūn muhz̤ūf wazn.
[2329] aūtkān yīl (u) har maḥal mūndāq ´āriẓat kīm būldī, from which it seems correct to omit the u (and), thus allowing the reference to be to last year’s illnesses only; because no record, of any date, survives of illness lasting even one full month, and no other year has a lacuna of sufficient length unless one goes improbably far back: for these attacks seem to be of Indian climatic fever. One in last year (934 AH.) lasting 25-26 days (f. 331) might be called a month’s illness; another or others may have happened in the second half of the year and their record be lost, as several have been lost, to the detriment of connected narrative.
[2330] Mr. Erskine’s rendering (Memoirs p. 388) of the above section shows something of what is gained by acquaintance which he had not, with the Rashaḥāt-i-´āinu’l-ḥayāt and with Bābur’s versified Wālidiyyah-risāla.
[2331] This gap, like some others in the diary of 935 AH. can be attributed safely to loss of pages, because preliminaries are now wanting to several matters which Bābur records shortly after it. Such are (1) the specification of the three articles sent to Naṣrat Shāh, (2) the motive for the feast of f. 351b, (3) the announcement of the approach of the surprising group of envoys, who appear without introduction at that entertainment, in a manner opposed to Bābur’s custom of writing, (4) an account of their arrival and reception.
[2332] Land-holder (see Hobson-Jobson s.n. talookdar).
[2333] The long detention of this messenger is mentioned in Bābur’s letter to Humāyūn (f. 349).
[2334] These words, if short a be read in Shăh, make 934 by abjad. The child died in infancy; no son of Humāyūn’s had survived childhood before Akbar was born, some 14 years later. Concerning Abū’l-wajd Fārighī, see Ḥabību’s-siyar, lith. ed. ii, 347; Muntakhabu’t-tawārikh, Bib. Ind. ed. i, 3; and Index s.n.