II
The Tabaqat-i-baburi was written during Babur’s life by his Persian secretary Shaikh Zainu’d-din of Khawaf; it paraphrases in rhetorical Persian the record of a few months of Hindustan campaigning, including the battle of Panipat.
Table of the Hindustan MSS. of the Babur-nama.[12]
| Names. | Date of completion. | Folio-standard 382.[13] | Archetype. | Scribe. | Latest known location. | Remarks. |
| 1. Babur’s Codex. | 1530. | Originally much over 382. | — | Babur. | Royal Library between 1628-38. | Has disappeared. |
| 2. Khwaja Kalan _Ahraris_ Codex. | 1529. | Undefined 363(?), p. 652. | No. 1. | Unknown. | Sent to Samarkand 1529. | Possibly still in Khwaja Kalan’s family. |
| 3. Humayun’s Codex = (commanded and annotate?).[14] | 1531(?). | Originally = No. 1 (unmutilated). | No. 1. | ‘Ali’u-’l-katib(?). | Royal Library between 1556-1567. | Seems the archetype of No. 5. |
| 4. Muhammad Haidar _Dughlat’s_ Codex. | Between 1536 and 40(?). | No. 1 (unmutilated). | No. 1 or No. 2. | Haidar(?) | Kashmir 1540-47. | Possibly now in Kashghar. |
| 5. Elphinstone Codex. | Between 1556 and 1567. | In 1816 and 1907, 286 ff. | No. 3. | Unknown. | Advocates’ Library (1816 to 1921). | Bought in Peshawar 1810. |
| 6. British Museum MS. | 1629. | 97 (fragments). | Unknown. | ‘Ali’u’l-_kashmiri_. | British Museum. | — |
| 7. Bib. Lindesiana MS. [now John Rylands] | Scribe living in 1625. | 71 (an extract). | Unknown. | Nur-muhammad (nephew of ‘Abu’l-faẓl). | John Rylands Library. | — |
| 8. Haidarabad Codex. | Paper indicates _cir._ 1700. | 382. | (No. 1) mutilated. | No colophon. | The late Sir Salar-jang’s Library. | Centupled in facsimile, 1905. |
III
During the first decade of Humayun’s reign (1530-40) at least two important codices seem to have been copied.
The earlier (see Table, No. 2) has varied circumstantial warrant. It meets the need of an archetype, one marginally annotated by Humayun, for the Elphinstone Codex in which a few notes are marginal and signed, others are pell-mell, interpolated in the text but attested by a scrutineer as having been marginal in its archetype and mistakenly copied into its text. This second set has been ineffectually sponged over. Thus double collation is indicated (i) with Babur’s autograph MS. to clear out extra Babur matter, and (ii) with its archetype, to justify the statement that in this the interpolations were marginal.—No colophon survives with the much dwindled Elph. Codex, but one, suiting the situation, has been observed, where it is a complete misfit, appended to the Alwar Codex of the second Persian translation, (estimated as copied in 1589). Into the incongruities of that colophon it is not necessary to examine here, they are too obvious to aim at deceit; it appears fitly to be an imperfect translation from a Turki original, this especially through its odd fashion of entitling “Humayun Padshah.” It can be explained as translating the colophon of the Codex (No. 2) which, as his possession, Humayun allowably annotated and which makes it known that he had ordered ‘Ali’u-’l-katib to copy his father’s Turki book, and that it was finished in February, 1531, some six weeks after Babur’s death.[15]
The later copy made in Humayun’s first decade is Haidar Mirza’s (infra).
IV