The Bābur-nāma in English (Memoirs of Bābur)Babur, Emperor of Hindustan
History
The Bābur-nāma in English (Memoirs of Bābur)
Babur, Emperor of Hindustan
Babur, Emperor of Hindustan, 1483-1530; Mogul Empire
The Elphinstone Codex[16] has had an adventurous career. The
enigma of its archetype is posed above; it may have been copied
during Akbar's first decade (1556-67); its, perhaps first,
owner was a Bai-qara rebel (d. 1567) from amongst whose
possessions it passed into the Royal Library, where it was
cleared of foreign matter by the expunction of Humayun's
marginal notes which its scribe had interpolated into its text.
At a date I do not know, it must have left the Royal Library
for its fly-leaves bear entries of prices and in 1810 it was
found and purchased in Peshawar by Elphinstone. It went with
him to Calcutta, and there may have been seen by Leyden during
the short time between its arrival and the autumn month of the
same year (1810) when he sailed for Java. In 1813 Elphinstone
in Poona sent it to Erskine in Bombay, saying that he had
fancied it gone to Java and had been writing to `Izzatu'l-lah
to procure another MS. for Erskine in Bukhara, but that all the
time it was on his own shelves. Received after Erskine had
dolefully compared his finished work with Leyden's (tentative)
translation, Erskine sadly recommenced the review of his own
work. The Codex had suffered much defacement down to 908 (1502)
at the hands of "a Persian Turk of Ganj" who had interlined it
with explanations. It came to Scotland (with Erskine?) who in
1826 sent it with a covering letter (Dec. 12th, 1826), at its
owner's desire, to the Advocates' Library where it now is. In
1907 it was fully described by me in the JRAS.
VI
Of two _Waqi'at-i-baburi_ (Pers. trs.) made in Akbar's reign,
the earlier was begun in 1583, at private instance, by two
Mughuls Payanda-hasan of Ghazni and Muhammad-quli of Hisar.
The Bodleian and British Museum Libraries have copies of it,
very fragmentary unfortunately, for it is careful, likeable,
and helpful by its small explanatory glosses. It has the great
defect of not preserving autobiographic quality in its diction.
VII
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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