[2354] Perhaps Bābur here makes a placatory little joke.
[2355] i.e. that offered by T̤ahmāsp’s rout of the Aūzbegs at Jām.
[2356] He was an adherent of Bābur. Cf. f. 353.
[2357] The plural “your” will include Humāyūn and Kāmrān. Neither had yet shewn himself the heritor of his father’s personal dash and valour; they had lacked the stress which shaped his heroism.
[2358] My husband has traced these lines to Niz̤āmī’s Khusrau and Shīrīn. [They occur on f. 256b in his MS. of 317 folios.] Bābur may have quoted from memory, since his version varies. The lines need their context to be understood; they are part of Shīrīn’s address to Khusrau when she refuses to marry him because at the time he is fighting for his sovereign position; and they say, in effect, that while all other work stops for marriage (kadkhudāī), kingly rule does not.
[2359] Aūlūghlār kūtārīmlīk kīrāk; 2nd Pers. trs. buzurgān bardāsht mī bāīd kardand. This dictum may be a quotation. I have translated it to agree with Bābur’s reference to the ages of the brothers, but aūlūghlār expresses greatness of position as well as seniority in age, and the dictum may be taken as a Turkī version of “Noblesse oblige”, and may also mean “The great must be magnanimous”. (Cf. de C.’s Dict. s.n. kūtārīmlīk.) [It may be said of the verb bardāshlan used in the Pers. trs., that Abū’l-faẕl, perhaps translating kūtārīmlīk reported to him, puts it into Bābur’s mouth when, after praying to take Humāyūn’s illness upon himself, he cried with conviction, “I have borne it away” (A.N. trs. H.B. i, 276).]
[2360] If Bābur had foreseen that his hard-won rule in Hindūstān was to be given to the winds of one son’s frivolities and the other’s disloyalty, his words of scant content with what the Hindūstān of his desires had brought him, would have expressed a yet keener pain (Rāmpūr Dīwān E.D.R.’s ed. p. 15 l. 5 fr. ft.).
[2361] Bostān, cap. Advice of Noshirwān to Hurmuz (H.B.).
[2362] A little joke at the expense of the mystifying letter.
[2363] For yā, Mr. Erskine writes be. What the mistake was is an open question; I have guessed an exchange of ī for ū, because such an exchange is not infrequent amongst Turkī long vowels.