[2830] Plate XI, and p. 15 (mid-page) of the Facsimile booklet.—The Facsimile does not show the whole of the marginal quatrain, obviously because for the last page of the manuscript a larger photographic plate was needed than for the rest. With Dr. Ross’ concurrence a photograph in which the defect is made good, accompanies this Appendix.
[2831] The second section ends on Plate XVII, and p. 21 of the Facsimile booklet.
[2832] Needless to say that whatever the history of the manuscript, its value as preserving poems of which no other copy is known publicly, is untouched. This value would be great without the marginal entries on the last page; it finds confirmation in the identity of many of the shorter poems with counterparts in the Bābur-nāma.
[2833] Another autograph of Shāh-i-jahān’s is included in the translation volume (p. xiii) of Gul-badan Begam’s Humāyūn-nāma. It surprises one who works habitually on historical writings more nearly contemporary with Bābur, in which he is spoken of as Firdaus-makānī or as Gītī-sitānī Firdaus-makānī and not by the name used during his life, to find Shāh-i-jahān giving him the two styles (cf. Jahāngīr’s Memoirs trs. ii, 5). Those familiar with the writings of Shāh-i-jahān’s biographers will know whether this is usual at that date. There would seem no doubt as to the identity of ān Ḥaẓrat.—The words ān ḥaẓrat by which Shāh-i-jahān refers to Bābur are used also in the epitaph placed by Jahāngīr at Bābur’s tomb (Trs. Note p. 710-711).
[2834] The Qāẓī’s rapid acquirement of the mufradāt of the script allows the inference that few letters only and those of a well-known script were varied.—Mufradāt was translated by Erskine, de Courteille and myself (f. 357b) as alphabet but reconsideration by the light of more recent information about the Bāburī-khat̤t̤ leads me to think this is wrong because “alphabet” includes every letter.—On f. 357b three items of the Bāburī-khat̤t̤ are specified as despatched with the Hindūstān poems, viz. mufradāt, qita‘lār and sar-i-khat̤t̤. Of these the first went to Hind-āl, the third to Kāmrān, and no recipient is named for the second; all translators have sent the qita‘lār to Hind-āl but I now think this wrong and that a name has been omitted, probably Humāyūn’s.
[2835] f. 144b, p. 228, n. 3. Another interesting matter missing from the Bābur-nāma by the gap between 914 and 925 AH. is the despatch of an embassy to Czar Vassili III. in Moscow, mentioned in Schuyler’s Turkistan ii, 394, Appendix IV, Grigorief’s Russian Policy in Central Asia. The mission went after “Sulṯān Bābur” had established himself in Kābul; as Bābur does not write of it before his narrative breaks off abruptly in 914 AH. it will have gone after that date.
[2836] I quote from the Véliaminof-Zernov edition (p. 287) from which de Courteille’s plan of work involved extract only; he translates the couplet, giving to khat̤t̤ the double-meanings of script and down of youth (Dictionnaire Turque s.n. sīghnāqī). The Sanglākh (p. 252) s.n. sīghnāq has the following as Bābur’s:—
Chū balai khat̤t̤ī naṣīb’ng būlmāsa Bābur nī tang?
Bare khat̤t̤ almanṣūr khat̤t̤ sighnāqī mū dūr?
[2837] Gibb’s History of Ottoman Poetry i, 113 and ii, 137.